Alliance for Pandemic Preparedness

December 10, 2020

Long-Term SARS-CoV-2 RNA Shedding and Its Temporal Association to IgG Seropositivity

Category:

Topic:

Keywords (Tags):

  • A retrospective study juxtaposing longitudinal SARS-CoV-2 PCR positivity with IgG antibody seropositivity (n=851) found patients who seroconverted may still actively shed viral RNA. Out of 90 patients with positive IgG results (mean upper bound from initial PCR test = 37.8 days), 14 were actively shedding viral RNA (positive PCR test) between 0 and 64 days after an IgG positive test. Though PCR positivity does not imply infectiousness, the authors suggest longitudinally monitoring viral loads and neutralizing antibody titers to characterize the infection lifecycle.

Agarwal et al. (Dec 2, 2020). Long-Term SARS-CoV-2 RNA Shedding and Its Temporal Association to IgG Seropositivity. Cell Death Discovery. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41420-020-00375-y