Detection of neutralising antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 to determine population exposure in Scottish blood donors between March and May 2020
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Abstract
The progression and geographical distribution of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection in the United Kingdom (UK) and elsewhere is unknown because typically only symptomatic individuals are diagnosed. We performed a serological study of blood donors in Scotland in the spring of 2020 to detect neutralising antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 as a marker of past infection and epidemic progression.
Aim
Our objective was to determine if sera from blood bank donors can be used to track the emergence and progression of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic.
Methods
A pseudotyped SARS-CoV-2 virus microneutralisation assay was used to detect neutralising antibodies to SARS-CoV-2. The study comprised samples from 3,500 blood donors collected in Scotland between 17 March and 18 May 2020. Controls were collected from 100 donors in Scotland during 2019.
Results
All samples collected on 17 March 2020 (n = 500) were negative in the pseudotyped SARS-CoV-2 virus microneutralisation assay. Neutralising antibodies were detected in six of 500 donors from 23 to 26 March. The number of samples containing neutralising antibodies did not significantly rise after 5–6 April until the end of the study on 18 May. We found that infections were concentrated in certain postcodes, indicating that outbreaks of infection were extremely localised. In contrast, other areas remained comparatively untouched by the epidemic.
Conclusion
Although blood donors are not representative of the overall population, we demonstrated that serosurveys of blood banks can serve as a useful tool for tracking the emergence and progression of an epidemic such as the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.04.13.20060467: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.Table 2: Resources
Experimental Models: Cell Lines Sentences Resources Neutralising antibody titres were determined by endpoint two-fold serial dilutions of test samples mixed with 105 relative light units (RLU) of pseudotyped virus, incubated at 37°C for two hours and then mixed with 104 HEK 293T ACE2-transfected cells per well. HEK 293Tsuggested: NoneSoftware and Algorithms Sentences Resources The model was fit in R version 3.6.3 using the Bayesian inference package JAGS version 4.3.0 (23). JAGSsuggested: (rjags, RRID:SCR_017573)Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open …
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.04.13.20060467: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.Table 2: Resources
Experimental Models: Cell Lines Sentences Resources Neutralising antibody titres were determined by endpoint two-fold serial dilutions of test samples mixed with 105 relative light units (RLU) of pseudotyped virus, incubated at 37°C for two hours and then mixed with 104 HEK 293T ACE2-transfected cells per well. HEK 293Tsuggested: NoneSoftware and Algorithms Sentences Resources The model was fit in R version 3.6.3 using the Bayesian inference package JAGS version 4.3.0 (23). JAGSsuggested: (rjags, RRID:SCR_017573)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.
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