TY - JOUR
T1 - Testing IgG antibodies against the RBD of SARS-CoV-2 is sufficient and necessary for COVID-19 diagnosis
AU - Indenbaum, Victoria
AU - Koren, Ravit
AU - Katz-Likvornik, Shiri
AU - Yitzchaki, Mayan
AU - Halpern, Osnat
AU - Regev-Yochay, Gili
AU - Cohen, Carmit
AU - Biber, Asaf
AU - Feferman, Tali
AU - Saban, Noy Cohen
AU - Dhan, Roni
AU - Levin, Tal
AU - Gozlan, Yael
AU - Weil, Merav
AU - Mor, Orna
AU - Mandelboim, Michal
AU - Sofer, Danit
AU - Mendelson, Ella
AU - Lustig, Yaniv
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Indenbaum et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2020/11
Y1 - 2020/11
N2 - The COVID-19 pandemic and the fast global spread of the disease resulted in unprecedented decline in world trade and travel. A critical priority is, therefore, to quickly develop serological diagnostic capacity and identify individuals with past exposure to SARS-CoV-2. In this study serum samples obtained from 309 persons infected by SARS-CoV-2 and 324 of healthy, uninfected individuals as well as serum from 7 COVID-19 patients with 4-7 samples each ranging between 1-92 days post first positive PCR were tested by an "in house"ELISA which detects IgM, IgA and IgG antibodies against the receptor binding domain (RBD) of SARS-CoV-2. Sensitivity of 47%, 80% and 88% and specificity of 100%, 98% and 98% in detection of IgM, IgA and IgG antibodies, respectively, were observed. IgG antibody levels against the RBD were demonstrated to be up regulated between 1-7 days after COVID-19 detection, earlier than both IgM and IgA antibodies. Study of the antibody kinetics of seven COVID 19 patients revealed that while IgG levels are high and maintained for at least 3 months, IgM and IgA levels decline after a 35-50 days following infection. Altogether, these results highlight the usefulness of the RBD based ELISA, which is both easy and cheap to prepare, to identify COVID-19 patients even at the acute phase. Most importantly our results demonstrate that measuring IgG levels alone is both sufficient and necessary to diagnose past exposure to SARS-CoV-2.
AB - The COVID-19 pandemic and the fast global spread of the disease resulted in unprecedented decline in world trade and travel. A critical priority is, therefore, to quickly develop serological diagnostic capacity and identify individuals with past exposure to SARS-CoV-2. In this study serum samples obtained from 309 persons infected by SARS-CoV-2 and 324 of healthy, uninfected individuals as well as serum from 7 COVID-19 patients with 4-7 samples each ranging between 1-92 days post first positive PCR were tested by an "in house"ELISA which detects IgM, IgA and IgG antibodies against the receptor binding domain (RBD) of SARS-CoV-2. Sensitivity of 47%, 80% and 88% and specificity of 100%, 98% and 98% in detection of IgM, IgA and IgG antibodies, respectively, were observed. IgG antibody levels against the RBD were demonstrated to be up regulated between 1-7 days after COVID-19 detection, earlier than both IgM and IgA antibodies. Study of the antibody kinetics of seven COVID 19 patients revealed that while IgG levels are high and maintained for at least 3 months, IgM and IgA levels decline after a 35-50 days following infection. Altogether, these results highlight the usefulness of the RBD based ELISA, which is both easy and cheap to prepare, to identify COVID-19 patients even at the acute phase. Most importantly our results demonstrate that measuring IgG levels alone is both sufficient and necessary to diagnose past exposure to SARS-CoV-2.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85096733567&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0241164
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0241164
M3 - ???researchoutput.researchoutputtypes.contributiontojournal.article???
C2 - 33227020
AN - SCOPUS:85096733567
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 15
JO - PLoS ONE
JF - PLoS ONE
IS - 11 November
M1 - e0241164
ER -
