At-home sampling to meet geographical challenges for serological assessment of SARS-CoV-2 exposure in a rural region of northern Sweden, March to May 2021: a retrospective cohort study
This article has been Reviewed by the following groups
Listed in
- Evaluated articles (ScreenIT)
Abstract
The current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has highlighted a need for easy and safe blood sampling in combination with accurate serological methodology. Venipuncture for testing is usually performed by trained staff at healthcare centres. Long travel distances to healthcare centres in rural regions may introduce a bias of testing towards relatively large communities with closer access. Rural regions are therefore often not represented in population-based data.
Aim
The aim of this retrospective cohort study was to develop and implement a strategy for at-home testing in a rural region of Sweden during spring 2021, and to evaluate its role to provide equal health care for its inhabitants.
Methods
We developed a sensitive method to measure antibodies to the S-protein of SARS-CoV-2 and optimised this assay for clinical use together with a strategy of at-home capillary blood sampling.
Results
We demonstrated that our ELISA gave comparable results after analysis of capillary blood or serum from SARS-CoV-2-experienced individuals. We demonstrated stability of the assay under conditions that reflected temperature and humidity during winter or summer. By assessment of capillary blood samples from 4,122 individuals, we could show both feasibility of the strategy and that implementation shifted the geographical spread of testing in favour of rural areas.
Conclusion
Implementation of at-home sampling enabled citizens living in remote rural areas access to centralised and sensitive laboratory antibody tests. The strategy for testing used here could therefore enable disease control authorities to get rapid access to information concerning immunity to infectious diseases, even across vast geographical distance.
Article activity feed
-
-
-
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.06.02.20120477: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Cell Line Authentication not detected. Table 2: Resources
Antibodies Sentences Resources We performed the HRP S ELISA protocol similarly, with following exceptions; The serum sample dilution was 1/50 in blocking buffer and as secondary we used a goat-anti human IgG horseradish peroxidase (HRP)-conjugated antibody (#H10007, Thermo Scientific) diluted 1/5000 in blocking buffer. human IgGsuggested: (Thermo Fisher Scientific Cat# H10007, RRID:AB_2536544)Virus infected cells was stained for 1 h with anti-SARS-CoV-2 N protein rabbit monoclonal … SciScore for 10.1101/2020.06.02.20120477: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Cell Line Authentication not detected. Table 2: Resources
Antibodies Sentences Resources We performed the HRP S ELISA protocol similarly, with following exceptions; The serum sample dilution was 1/50 in blocking buffer and as secondary we used a goat-anti human IgG horseradish peroxidase (HRP)-conjugated antibody (#H10007, Thermo Scientific) diluted 1/5000 in blocking buffer. human IgGsuggested: (Thermo Fisher Scientific Cat# H10007, RRID:AB_2536544)Virus infected cells was stained for 1 h with anti-SARS-CoV-2 N protein rabbit monoclonal antibody (Sino Biological 40143-R001) diluted 1:1000 in blocking buffer, followed by secondary donkey anti-rabbit IgG (H+L) Alexa Fluor 488 antibody (Invitrogen) 1:1000 in blocking buffer for 30 min and DAPI staining (0.1 ug/mL in PBS) for 5 min. anti-SARS-CoV-2 N proteinsuggested: Noneanti-rabbit IgGsuggested: NoneExperimental Models: Cell Lines Sentences Resources Virus and plaque neutralization assay: Vero E6 cells were cultured in Dulbecco’s modified Eagle’s medium (DMEM, D5648 Sigma) supplemented with 5 % FBS (HyClone), 10 units/mL penicillin and 10 µg/ml streptomycin (PeSt, HyClone). Vero E6suggested: RRID:CVCL_XD71)Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources Statistics: Statistical analysis was performed by using Prism 8 (Graphpad software). Graphpadsuggested: (GraphPad, RRID:SCR_000306)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.
-