Predictive Analysis of the Neutralization Activity in Convalescent Plasmas From COVID-19 Recovered Patients in Zhejiang Province, China, January-March, 2020

BACKGROUND: Convalescent plasma (CP) transfusion is considered to be the priority therapeutic option for COVID-19 inpatients when no specific drugs are available for emerging infections. An alternative, simple, and sensitive method is urgently needed for clinical use to detect neutralization activity of the CP to avoid the use of inconvenient micro-neutralization assay. METHOD: This study aims to explore optimal index in predicting the COVID-19 CP neutralization activity (neutralizing antibody titers, NAb titers) in an indirect ELISA format. Fifty-seven COVID-19-recovered patients plasma samples were subjected to anti-SARS-CoV-2 RBD, S1, and N protein IgG antibody by indirect ELISA. RESULTS: ELISA-RBD exhibited high specificity (96.2%) and ELISA-N had high sensitivity (100%); while ELISA-S1 had low sensitivity (86.0%) and specificity (73.1%). Furthermore, ELISA-RBD IgG titers and pseudovirus-based NAb titers correlated significantly, with R(2) of 0.2564 (P < 0.0001). CONCLUSION: ELISA-RBD could be a substitute for the neutralization assay in resource-limited situations to screen potential plasma donors for further plasma infusion therapy.