Infection Ecology & Epidemiology (Jan 2020)

Serology assessment of antibody response to SARS-CoV-2 in patients with COVID-19 by rapid IgM/IgG antibody test

  • Yang De Marinis,
  • Torgny Sunnerhagen,
  • Pradeep Bompada,
  • Anna Bläckberg,
  • Runtao Yang,
  • Joel Svensson,
  • Ola Ekström,
  • Karl-Fredrik Eriksson,
  • Ola Hansson,
  • Leif Groop,
  • Isabel Gonçalves,
  • Magnus Rasmussen

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080/20008686.2020.1821513
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10, no. 1

Abstract

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The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has created a global health- and economic crisis. Detection of antibodies to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) which causes COVID-19 by serological methods is important to diagnose a current or resolved infection. In this study, we applied a rapid COVID-19 IgM/IgG antibody test and performed serology assessment of antibody response to SARS-CoV-2. In PCR-confirmed COVID-19 patients (n = 45), the total antibody detection rate is 92% in hospitalized patients and 79% in non-hospitalized patients. The total IgM and IgG detection is 63% in patients with 2 weeks disease duration; and 91% in hospitalized patients with >2 weeks disease duration. We also compared different blood sample types and suggest a higher sensitivity by serum/plasma over whole blood. Test specificity was determined to be 97% on 69 sera/plasma samples collected between 2016-2018. Our study provides a comprehensive validation of the rapid COVID-19 IgM/IgG serology test, and mapped antibody detection patterns in association with disease progress and hospitalization. Our results support that the rapid COVID-19 IgM/IgG test may be applied to assess the COVID-19 status both at the individual and at a population level.

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