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Topic: Testing and Treatment
June 15, 2021
SARS-CoV -2 Antibody Persistence in COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma Donors: Dependency on Assay Format and Applicability to Serosurveillance
SARS-CoV-2 antibody responses were shown to increase over time in a study of plasma collected up to 63-129 days following symptom resolution from 18 patients recovered from COVID-19 when using direct double Ag-sandwich assays (Ortho Total Ig and Roche Total Ig). By contrast, measurements from indirect binding assays showed a declining antibody response. Due to…
June 14, 2021
A Comparison of SARS-CoV-2 Nucleocapsid and Spike Antibody Detection Using Three Commercially Available Automated Immunoassays
A study comparing the Abbott SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid IgG, Beckman-Coulter SARS-CoV-2 spike IgG, and Roche Anti-SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid total antibody assays found that all three demonstrated 100% specificity, and sensitivities of 98%, 93%, and 90%, respectively. After the exclusion of samples from immunocompromised patients, all assays exhibited ≥95% sensitivity. In sequential samples collected from the same individuals,…
COVID-19 Treatment Combinations and Associations with Mortality in a Large Multi-Site Healthcare System
A study conducted between March and July 2020 that assessed the association between COVID-19 mortality and different treatment combinations found that anticoagulation treatment alone was associated with significantly reduced mortality for both patients receiving intensive care and non-intensive care. The four treatment combinations studied were anticoagulation only (OR=0.2), anticoagulation and remdesivir (OR=0.3), anticoagulation and corticosteroids…
June 11, 2021
Improved Survival among Hospitalized Patients with COVID-19 Treated with Remdesivir and Dexamethasone. A Nationwide Population-Based Cohort Study
A retrospective cohort study from Denmark found that patients hospitalized with COVID-19 (N=2,747) who were treated with remdesivir and dexamethasone had lower odds of 30-day mortality (OR=0.47) and progression to mechanical ventilation (OR=0.36) compared to persons receiving the standard of care. However, the authors caution that because treatment was not randomized, study data does not…
June 9, 2021
Accuracy of ICD-10 Diagnostic Codes to Identify COVID-19 Among Hospitalized Patients
The ICD-10 Diagnostic Code for COVID-19 (U07.1) had an overall sensitivity of 49% and specificity of 99% compared to the gold standard of a positive PCR test among 2,210 PCR-positive patients discharged between April and July 2020 across the Mass General Brigham health system in Boston, Massachusetts. Specificity was consistently high, but sensitivity varied and…
June 8, 2021
Nanobodies from Camelid Mice and Llamas Neutralize SARS-CoV-2 Variants
Two groups of single-domain antibodies, known as nanobodies, isolated from llamas and genetically engineered mice was identified to possess anti-SARS-CoV-2 receptor binding domain (RBD) neutralizing activity. The first group is able to bind to a region in the RBD largely preserved across SARS-CoV-2 mutations but rarely targeted by human antibodies, while the second group demonstrated…
Improved Diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 by Using Nucleoprotein and Spike Protein Fragment 2 in Quantitative Dual ELISA Tests
A combination of two quantitative ELISA assays using SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid (N) and spike subunit 2 (S2) was able to detect at least 10% more true positive COVID-19 cases compared to a commercially available antibody test (Abbott) when tested against a panel of 42 SARS-CoV-2 positive serum samples and 37 negative control samples. Analysis of assay…
June 7, 2021
Early Monoclonal Antibody Administration Can Reduce Both Hospitalizations and Mortality in High-Risk Outpatients with COVID-19
Treatment with monoclonal antibody (mAb) therapy, including casirivimab/imdevimab and bamlanivimab, was associated with a significant reduction in the frequency of hospitalization compared to controls not receiving mAb treatment (1.7% vs. 24%) in a retrospective study of 617 outpatients with COVID-19 classified as high-risk (n = 175 received mAb). There were no COVID-19-related deaths in the…
June 4, 2021
A Comparison of Four Commercially Available RNA Extraction Kits for Wastewater Surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 in a College Population
[Pre-print, not peer-reviewed] A comparison of four commercially available RNA extraction kits found that the Zymo Quick-RNA Viral kit yielded the most consistent, timely, and accurate results for detection of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater from a college campus. Although wastewater-based surveillance has been performed as an early detection system for enteric viruses, most of these viruses…
Implementing Mandatory Testing and a Public Health Commitment to Control COVID-19 on a College Campus
[Pre-print, not peer-reviewed] A report from George Washington University, a large urban university in Washington, DC, highlighted the institution’s successes in mitigating the spread of SARS-CoV-2 among students and staff. Mitigation measures included development of a dedicated rapid and high-throughput COVID-19 laboratory, weekly and symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 testing, and daily risk screening and symptom monitoring. During…
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