Predicting COVID-19 Severity with a Specific Nucleocapsid Antibody plus Disease Risk Factor Score

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Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in over two million deaths worldwide. Despite efforts to fight the virus, the disease continues to overwhelm hospitals with severely ill patients.

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  1. SciScore for 10.1101/2020.10.15.341743: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.


    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).


    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    This study demonstrates the usefulness of fine epitope mapping, but the following limitations should be noted. Short linear epitopes, unlike conformational epitopes in larger domains, might not resemble the tertiary structure of an antigen. Post-translational modifications, such as glycosylation were omitted for the phage-displayed S protein epitopes; the COVAM antigens, however, are produced in baculovirus or HEK-293 cells, which could glycosylate the antigens. Our analysis is largely based upon a population of 86 COVID-19 patients and 5 healthy individuals, with the majority of Hispanic descent. The conclusions could be further strengthened with follow-up investigations in a larger population. Additionally, the population examined here only included three asymptomatic individuals, and additional testing is required to verify absence of αEp9 Abs in such patients. The sample size of patients with multiple antibody targets was too limited to allow correlation analysis; future investigations could examine associations between αEp9 and other Abs. Abs recognizing other SARS-CoV-2 structural proteins could also exhibit similar characteristics to αEp9 Abs. Existing diagnostic platforms could readily be adapted to test for αEp9 Abs, and the DRFS calculation is quite simple to implement (e.g., assay with eGFP-Ep9 fusion demonstrated here). As shown here, αEp9 Abs do not recognize orthologous sequences from closely related coronaviruses, providing good specificity for αEp9 as a progno...

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.


    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.


    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.


    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

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