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      COVID-19 Antibody Tests: A Valuable Public Health Tool with Limited Relevance to Individuals

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          Abstract

          Antibody tests for detecting past infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) have many uses for public health decision making, but demand has largely come from individual consumers. This review focuses on the individual relevance of antibody tests: their accuracy in detecting prior infection, what past SARS-CoV-2 infection can currently infer about future immunity or possible medical sequelae, and the potential future importance of antibody tests for vaccine selection and medical screening. Given uncertainty about the antibody tests (quality, accuracy level, positive predictive value) and what those tests might indicate immunologically (durability of antibodies and necessity for protection from reinfection), seropositive test results should not be used to inform individual decision making, and antibody testing should remain a tool of public health at this time.

          Highlights

          • There is high consumer demand for antibody tests to detect past infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), but there is a great deal of uncertainty about what a positive test means immunologically.

          • Uneven test accuracy and statistical challenges, especially in areas of low disease prevalence, further complicate use of antibody tests for individual decision making.

          • Antibody tests are important for convalescent plasma donation and may have future utility to identify coronavirus disease 2019 medical sequelae and for vaccine selection and prioritization.

          • At the population level, tests are needed to support serosurveillance studies, to determine the case fatality rate, and to track increases or decreases in incidence and prevalence, but currently they are of limited utility for individuals.

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          Most cited references87

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          Neurologic Manifestations of Hospitalized Patients With Coronavirus Disease 2019 in Wuhan, China

          The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Wuhan, China, is serious and has the potential to become an epidemic worldwide. Several studies have described typical clinical manifestations including fever, cough, diarrhea, and fatigue. However, to our knowledge, it has not been reported that patients with COVID-19 had any neurologic manifestations.
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            Targets of T cell responses to SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus in humans with COVID-19 disease and unexposed individuals

            Summary Understanding adaptive immunity to SARS-CoV-2 is important for vaccine development, interpreting coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pathogenesis, and calibration of pandemic control measures. Using HLA class I and II predicted peptide ‘megapools’, circulating SARS-CoV-2−specific CD8+ and CD4+ T cells were identified in ∼70% and 100% of COVID-19 convalescent patients, respectively. CD4+ T cell responses to spike, the main target of most vaccine efforts, were robust and correlated with the magnitude of the anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgG and IgA titers. The M, spike and N proteins each accounted for 11-27% of the total CD4+ response, with additional responses commonly targeting nsp3, nsp4, ORF3a and ORF8, among others. For CD8+ T cells, spike and M were recognized, with at least eight SARS-CoV-2 ORFs targeted. Importantly, we detected SARS-CoV-2−reactive CD4+ T cells in ∼40-60% of unexposed individuals, suggesting cross-reactive T cell recognition between circulating ‘common cold’ coronaviruses and SARS-CoV-2.
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              Clinical and immunological assessment of asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections

              The clinical features and immune responses of asymptomatic individuals infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) have not been well described. We studied 37 asymptomatic individuals in the Wanzhou District who were diagnosed with RT-PCR-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infections but without any relevant clinical symptoms in the preceding 14 d and during hospitalization. Asymptomatic individuals were admitted to the government-designated Wanzhou People's Hospital for centralized isolation in accordance with policy1. The median duration of viral shedding in the asymptomatic group was 19 d (interquartile range (IQR), 15-26 d). The asymptomatic group had a significantly longer duration of viral shedding than the symptomatic group (log-rank P = 0.028). The virus-specific IgG levels in the asymptomatic group (median S/CO, 3.4; IQR, 1.6-10.7) were significantly lower (P = 0.005) relative to the symptomatic group (median S/CO, 20.5; IQR, 5.8-38.2) in the acute phase. Of asymptomatic individuals, 93.3% (28/30) and 81.1% (30/37) had reduction in IgG and neutralizing antibody levels, respectively, during the early convalescent phase, as compared to 96.8% (30/31) and 62.2% (23/37) of symptomatic patients. Forty percent of asymptomatic individuals became seronegative and 12.9% of the symptomatic group became negative for IgG in the early convalescent phase. In addition, asymptomatic individuals exhibited lower levels of 18 pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines. These data suggest that asymptomatic individuals had a weaker immune response to SARS-CoV-2 infection. The reduction in IgG and neutralizing antibody levels in the early convalescent phase might have implications for immunity strategy and serological surveys.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Trends Microbiol
                Trends Microbiol
                Trends in Microbiology
                The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
                0966-842X
                1878-4380
                6 November 2020
                6 November 2020
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, Baltimore, MD, USA
                Author notes
                [* ]Correspondence:
                Article
                S0966-842X(20)30280-8
                10.1016/j.tim.2020.11.002
                7836413
                33234439
                5d45ae3c-3e4a-4f20-a02f-775d14479cb7
                © 2020 The Authors

                Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.

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                Categories
                Review

                Microbiology & Virology
                antibody tests,covid-19,sars-cov-2,serology tests
                Microbiology & Virology
                antibody tests, covid-19, sars-cov-2, serology tests

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