Detection of Nucleocapsid Antibodies Associated with Primary SARS-CoV-2 Infection in Unvaccinated and Vaccinated Blood Donors.

ABSTRACT: Nucleocapsid antibody assays can be used to estimate SARS-CoV-2 infection prevalence in regions implementing spike-based COVID-19 vaccines. However, poor sensitivity of nucleocapsid antibody assays in detecting infection after vaccination has been reported. We derived a lower cutoff for identifying previous infections in a large blood donor cohort (N = 142,599) by using the Ortho VITROS Anti-SARS-CoV-2 Total-N Antibody assay, improving sensitivity while maintaining specificity >98%. We validated sensitivity in samples donated after self-reported swab-confirmed infections diagnoses. Sensitivity for first infections in unvaccinated donors was 98.1% (95% CI 98.0-98.2) and for infection after vaccination was 95.6% (95% CI 95.6-95.7) based on the standard cutoff. Regression analysis showed sens

SUBMITTER: Grebe E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11286071 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature