Evaluation and Comparison of Serological Methods for COVID-19 Diagnosis

Fanwu Gong; Hua-Xing Wei; Qiangsheng Li; Liu Liu; Bofeng Li

doi:10.3389/fmolb.2021.682405

Evaluation and Comparison of Serological Methods for COVID-19 Diagnosis

Front Mol Biosci. 2021 Jul 23:8:682405. doi: 10.3389/fmolb.2021.682405. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Fanwu Gong¹, Hua-Xing Wei², Qiangsheng Li¹, Liu Liu³, Bofeng Li¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Medical Oncology, The First Affiliated Hospital of USTC, Division of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China.
² Department of Laboratory Medicine, The First Affiliated Hospital of USTC, Division of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China.
³ Department of General Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of USTC, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China.

Abstract

The worldwide pandemic of COVID-19 has become a global public health crisis. Various clinical diagnosis methods have been developed to distinguish COVID-19-infected patients from healthy people. The nucleic acid test is the golden standard for virus detection as it is suitable for early diagnosis. However, due to the low amount of viral nucleic acid in the respiratory tract, the sensitivity of nucleic acid detection is unsatisfactory. As a result, serological screening began to be widely used with the merits of simple procedures, lower cost, and shorter detection time. Serological tests currently include the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), lateral flow immunoassay (LFIA), and chemiluminescence immunoassay (CLIA). This review describes various serological methods, discusses the performance and diagnostic effects of different methods, and points out the problems and the direction of optimization, to improve the efficiency of clinical diagnosis. These increasingly sophisticated and diverse serological diagnostic technologies will help human beings to control the spread of COVID-19.

Keywords: COVID-19 diagnosis; ELISA; LFIA; SARS-CoV-2; antibody; serological testing.

Publication types

Review