New method to detect the presence of new coronavirus antibodies in the blood
Science and Technology Daily, Beijing, May 14 (Reporter Zhang Mengran) An immunology research paper published by the British "Nature Medicine" on the 12th, American scientists introduced a method that can detect the presence of new coronavirus antibodies in the blood of patients with new coronary pneumonia . This method has been tested on 16 patients or may help identify individuals with viral antibodies in their plasma, which are expected to be used to treat other patients.
A common method for diagnosing new crown pneumonia is to detect the presence of new crown viral RNA. However, if there is a way to detect the presence of new coronavirus antibodies, it may help to determine the virus infection rate in the population.
Florian Caramore, a scientist at the Icahn School of Medicine in Mount Sinai and his colleagues, developed an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay this time, which can be used to detect the presence of new coronavirus antibodies. For this method, the team created two versions of the new spike protein on the surface of the coronavirus. In other coronavirus infections, the spike protein helps the virus enter the host cell and is the target of the antibody. The first version contains the entire spike protein, and the second contains only the receptor binding domain (a small part of the spike protein).
The research team used plasma and serum samples from 16 new coronavirus infections. Through the method they developed, it was observed that all samples produced positive results for both versions of spike protein. Overall, they observed a stronger response to the full-length spike protein, which may indicate that the larger protein in this method provides more antibody binding sites. Using the same method to test 50 serum samples (negative control) collected from the subjects before the outbreak of new coronary pneumonia, they found that the response to spike protein was very low or no response.
The researchers pointed out that their method is relatively quick and simple, and does not need to deal with live viruses, but also reminded that the study did not include samples of other coronavirus or Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus infections, so they did not know the antibodies of these viruses Whether it will also give a positive result. In the future, larger samples will be needed for research.