June 8, 2020

Side by Side Comparison of Three Fully Automated SARS-CoV-2 Antibody Assays with a Focus on Specificity

Category: Article Summary

Topic: Testing and Treatment

• [pre-print, not peer reviewed] Comparison of the Abbott, Roche, and DiaSorin antibody assays found high specificity for all three (ranging from 98.3% to 99.2%). However, when seroprevalence is low, even these high specificities can result in very low positive predictive values (32.6% to 77.6% at 1% prevalence). Sensitivity was found to be lower than reported by the manufacturers (ranging from 83.1% to 89.2%) and the Roche and DiaSorin tests were most likely to disagree with each other.  

Perkmann et al. (June 5, 2020). Side by Side Comparison of Three Fully Automated SARS-CoV-2 Antibody Assays with a Focus on Specificity. Pre-print downloaded June 8 from https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.06.04.20117911