Evaluation of SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibody response in PCR positive patients: Comparison of nine tests in relation to clinical data

Abstract

SARS-CoV-2 antibody tests are available in various formats, detecting different viral target proteins and antibody subclasses. The specificity and sensitivity of SARS-CoV-2 antibody tests are known to vary and very few studies have addressed the performance of these tests in COVID-19 patient groups at different time points. We here compared the sensitivity and specificity of seven commercial (SNIBE, Epitope, Euroimmun, Roche, Abbott, DiaSorin, Biosensor) and two in-house LIPS assays (LIPS N and LIPS S-RBD) IgG/total Ab tests in serum samples from 97 COVID-19 patients and 100 controls, and correlated the results with the patients' clinical data and the time-point the test was performed. We found a remarkable variation in the sensitivity of antibody tests with the following performance: LIPS N (91.8%), Epitope (85.6%), Abbott and in-house LIPS S-RBD (both 84.5%), Roche (83.5%), Euroimmun (82.5%), DiaSorin (81.4%), SNIBE (70.1%), and Biosensor (64.9%). The overall agreement between the tests was between 71-95%, whereas the specificity of all tests was within 98-100%. The correlation with patients' clinical symptoms score ranged from strongest in LIPS N (ρ = 0.41; p<0.001) to nonsignificant in LIPS S-RBD. Furthermore, the time of testing since symptom onset had an impact on the sensitivity of some tests. Our study highlights the importance to consider clinical symptoms, time of testing, and using more than one viral antigen in SARS-CoV-2 antibody testing. Our results suggest that some antibody tests are more sensitive for the detection of antibodies in early stage and asymptomatic patients, which may explain the contradictory results of previous studies and should be taken into consideration in clinical practice and epidemiological studies.