November 16, 2020

SARS-CoV-2 Serological Tests Can Generate False Positive Results for Samples from Patients with Chronic Inflammatory Diseases

Category: Article Summary

Topic: Testing and Treatment

Keywords (Tags): testing

[Pre-print, not peer-reviewed] Most SARS-CoV-2 serological assays were sensitive to interfering antibodies in samples from patients with chronic inflammatory diseases, which may lead to false positivity. Samples from patients with multiple sclerosis (MS), rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) were evaluated with 17 commercially-available lateral flow assays. Six of those assays, plus an in-house IgG assay, gave correct negative results, but 13 gave false positive results for patients with RA and SLE. Several assays had nonspecific signals for SARS-CoV-2 IgG or IgM for the majority of samples from patients with RA.

Kharlamova et al. (Nov 13, 2020). SARS-CoV-2 Serological Tests Can Generate False Positive Results for Samples from Patients with Chronic Inflammatory Diseases. MedRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.11.13.20231076