Diagnostic Efficiency of Three Fully Automated Serology Assays and Their Correlation with a Novel Surrogate Virus Neutralization Test in Symptomatic and Asymptomatic SARS-COV-2 Individuals

• Published in: Microorganisms (Basel) 2021-01, Vol.9 (2), p.245
• Main Authors: Younes, Salma, Al-Jighefee, Hadeel, Shurrab, Farah, Al-Sadeq, Duaa W, Younes, Nadin, Dargham, Soha R, Al-Dewik, Nader, Qotba, Hamda, Syed, Mohamed, Alnuaimi, Ahmed, Yassine, Hadi M, Tang, Patrick, Abu-Raddad, Laith J, Nasrallah, Gheyath K
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Antibodies; Antigens; Assaying; Asymptomatic; Automation; Contact tracing; Coronaviruses; COVID-19; Cross-reactivity; Diagnostic systems; Expatriates; Immunoglobulin G; Infections; Medical laboratories; Neutralization; neutralizing antibodies; Nucleocapsids; Pandemics; Plasma; Polymerase chain reaction; Population; Proteins; Public health; Respiratory diseases; SARS-CoV-2; Sensitivity; Serology; Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2; specificity; Viral diseases; Viral infections; Viruses
• ISSN: 2076-2607; 2076-2607
• DOI: 10.3390/microorganisms9020245

To support the deployment of serology assays for population screening during the COVID-19 pandemic, we compared the performance of three fully automated SARS-CoV-2 IgG assays: Mindray CL-900i (target: spike [S] and nucleocapsid [N]), BioMérieux VIDAS 3 (target: receptor-binding domain [RBD]) and Diasorin LIAISON XL (target: S1 and S2 subunits). A total of 111 SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR- positive samples collected at ≥ 21 days post symptom onset, and 127 pre-pandemic control samples were included. Diagnostic performance was assessed in correlation to RT-PCR and a surrogate virus-neutralizing test (sVNT). Moreover, cross-reactivity with other viral antibodies was investigated. Compared to RT-PCR, LIAISON XL showed the highest overall specificity (100%), followed by VIDAS 3 (98.4%) and CL-900i (95.3%). The highest sensitivity was demonstrated by CL-900i (90.1%), followed by VIDAS 3 (88.3%) and LIAISON XL (85.6%). The sensitivity of all assays was higher in symptomatic patients (91.1-98.2%) compared to asymptomatic patients (78.4-80.4%). In correlation to sVNT, all assays showed excellent sensitivities (92.2-96.1%). In addition, VIDAS 3 demonstrated the best correlation (r = 0.75) with the sVNT. The present study provides insights on the performance of three fully automated assays, which could help diagnostic laboratories in the choice of a particular assay according to the intended use.