SARS-CoV-2 Antibody Testing in Health Care Workers: A Comparison of the Clinical Performance of Three Commercially Available Antibody Assays

  1. Niamh Allen
  2. Melissa Brady
  3. Antonio Isidro Carrion Martin
  4. Lisa Domegan
  5. Cathal Walsh
  6. Elaine Houlihan
  7. Colm Kerr
  8. Lorraine Doherty
  9. Joanne King
  10. Martina Doheny
  11. Damian Griffin
  12. Maria Molloy
  13. Jean Dunne
  14. Vivion Crowley
  15. Philip Holmes
  16. Evan Keogh
  17. Sean Naughton
  18. Martina Kelly
  19. Fiona O’Rourke
  20. Yvonne Lynagh
  21. Brendan Crowley
  22. Cillian de Gascun
  23. Paul Holder
  24. Colm Bergin
  25. Catherine Fleming
  26. Una Ni Riain
  27. Niall Conlon

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Abstract

As the COVID-19 pandemic progresses, retained sensitivity over time is an important quality in an antibody assay that is to be used for the purpose of population seroprevalence studies. There is a relative paucity of published literature in this field to help guide public health specialists when planning seroprevalence studies.

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  1. Version published to 10.1128/spectrum.00391-21
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.05.25.21257772: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    EthicsConsent: All staff members of both hospitals were invited to participate in an online self-administered consent process and online questionnaire, followed by blood sampling for SARS-CoV-2 antibody testing.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Antibodies
    SentencesResources
    Laboratory Assays: All samples were tested by two assays; the Abbott SARS-CoV-2 measuring IgG (referred to here as Abbott) and Roche Elecsys Anti-SARS-CoV-2 measuring total antibodies (referred to here as Roche) (15) (16) (17).
    Anti-SARS-CoV-2 measuring total antibodies
    suggested: None
    The Abbott SARS-CoV-2 IgG assay (Abbott) is a chemiluminescent microparticle immunoassay that detects IgG antibodies to the nucleocapsid protein of SARS-CoV-2.
    detects IgG
    suggested: None
    The Roche Elecsys Anti-SARS-CoV-2 total antibody assay (Roche) is an electrochemiluminescent immunoassay that detects antibodies (including IgG), also to the nucleocapsid protein.
    Anti-SARS-CoV-2
    suggested: None
    Wantai is an Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) for qualitative detection of total antibodies (including IgG and IgM) to the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2.
    IgM
    suggested: None
    Multivariable logistic regression was carried out to assess risk factors for the absence of SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibodies controlling for age, sex, ethnicity/background, type of patient contact, severity of symptoms and number of months since PCR positive test.
    SARS-CoV-2 IgG
    suggested: None
    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    The Roche Elecsys Anti-SARS-CoV-2 total antibody assay (Roche) is an electrochemiluminescent immunoassay that detects antibodies (including IgG), also to the nucleocapsid protein.
    IgG
    suggested: (DSHB Cat# LEP100 IgG, RRID:AB_528124)
    All samples with an Abbott result of positive or grayzone were tested on a third assay in the National Virus Reference Laboratory (NVRL) using the Wantai SARS-CoV-2 Antibody ELISA (referred to here as Wantai), distributed by Fortress Diagnostics.
    Abbott
    suggested: (Abbott, RRID:SCR_010477)
    We used R version 4.0.3 (R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria) and OpenEpi software version 3.01 (Wilson Score) (20).
    OpenEpi
    suggested: None

    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: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    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.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.05.25.21257772v1 on medRxiv