AUTHOR=Pu Yiyi , Weng Youhong , Wu Yahan , Gao Fei , Zheng Xiaojun , Xiong Xianqin , Lv Hangjun , Kong Qingming 

TITLE=Antibody Response to SARS-CoV-2 in the First Batch of COVID-19 Patients in China by a Self-Developed Rapid IgM-IgG Test

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology

VOLUME=Volume 12 - 2022

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/cellular-and-infection-microbiology/articles/10.3389/fcimb.2022.915751

DOI=10.3389/fcimb.2022.915751

ISSN=2235-2988

ABSTRACT=The COVID-19 pandemic has been over two years and is still an unprecedented global challenge. Here, we aimed to characterize the antibody profile from a large batch of early COVID-19 cases in China mainly between January and March, 2020. More than 1000 serum samples from participants in Hubei and Zhejiang province were collected. A series of serum samples were also collected along the disease course from 70 patients in Shanghai and Chongqing for longitudinal analysis. The serologic assay (ALLtest) we developed was confirmed to have high sensitivity (92.58% - 97.55%) and high specificity (92.14% - 96.28%) for detection of SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid-specific antibodies. In confirmed cases in HBCDC, we found significant (p = 0.0018) higher positive rate of ALLtest than RNA test. Then we further identified disease course, age, sex, symptom to be possible correlated factors with our ALLtest results. In summary, we confirmed high reliability of our ALLtest and its important role in COVID-19 diagnosis. The correlated factors we identified will require special attention during future clinical application.