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COVID-19 Antibody Tests: A Valuable Public Health Tool with Limited Relevance to Individuals

Antibody tests for detecting past infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) have many uses for public health decision making, but demand has largely come from individual consumers. This review focuses on the individual relevance of antibody tests: their accuracy in...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: West, Rachel, Kobokovich, Amanda, Connell, Nancy, Gronvall, Gigi Kwik
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7836413/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33234439
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tim.2020.11.002
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author West, Rachel
Kobokovich, Amanda
Connell, Nancy
Gronvall, Gigi Kwik
author_facet West, Rachel
Kobokovich, Amanda
Connell, Nancy
Gronvall, Gigi Kwik
author_sort West, Rachel
collection PubMed
description Antibody tests for detecting past infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) have many uses for public health decision making, but demand has largely come from individual consumers. This review focuses on the individual relevance of antibody tests: their accuracy in detecting prior infection, what past SARS-CoV-2 infection can currently infer about future immunity or possible medical sequelae, and the potential future importance of antibody tests for vaccine selection and medical screening. Given uncertainty about the antibody tests (quality, accuracy level, positive predictive value) and what those tests might indicate immunologically (durability of antibodies and necessity for protection from reinfection), seropositive test results should not be used to inform individual decision making, and antibody testing should remain a tool of public health at this time.
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spelling pubmed-78364132021-01-26 COVID-19 Antibody Tests: A Valuable Public Health Tool with Limited Relevance to Individuals West, Rachel Kobokovich, Amanda Connell, Nancy Gronvall, Gigi Kwik Trends Microbiol Review Antibody tests for detecting past infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) have many uses for public health decision making, but demand has largely come from individual consumers. This review focuses on the individual relevance of antibody tests: their accuracy in detecting prior infection, what past SARS-CoV-2 infection can currently infer about future immunity or possible medical sequelae, and the potential future importance of antibody tests for vaccine selection and medical screening. Given uncertainty about the antibody tests (quality, accuracy level, positive predictive value) and what those tests might indicate immunologically (durability of antibodies and necessity for protection from reinfection), seropositive test results should not be used to inform individual decision making, and antibody testing should remain a tool of public health at this time. The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. 2021-03 2020-11-06 /pmc/articles/PMC7836413/ /pubmed/33234439 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tim.2020.11.002 Text en © 2020 The Authors Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Review
West, Rachel
Kobokovich, Amanda
Connell, Nancy
Gronvall, Gigi Kwik
COVID-19 Antibody Tests: A Valuable Public Health Tool with Limited Relevance to Individuals
title COVID-19 Antibody Tests: A Valuable Public Health Tool with Limited Relevance to Individuals
title_full COVID-19 Antibody Tests: A Valuable Public Health Tool with Limited Relevance to Individuals
title_fullStr COVID-19 Antibody Tests: A Valuable Public Health Tool with Limited Relevance to Individuals
title_full_unstemmed COVID-19 Antibody Tests: A Valuable Public Health Tool with Limited Relevance to Individuals
title_short COVID-19 Antibody Tests: A Valuable Public Health Tool with Limited Relevance to Individuals
title_sort covid-19 antibody tests: a valuable public health tool with limited relevance to individuals
topic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7836413/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33234439
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tim.2020.11.002
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