Persistent levels of anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgM antibody measured by an in-house ELISA in a convalescent Latin population positively correlate with the neutralizing percentages to several variants of concern 2714

Abstract Description The coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 is the causative agent for the COVID-19 first registered in Wuhan, China and responsible for more than 6 million deaths worldwide. Currently, RT-PCR is the gold standard method for diagnosing COVID-19. However, serological tests are needed for screening acute disease diagnosis and screening large populations during the COVID-19 outbreak. Herein, we described the development and validation of an in-house enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) for detecting levels of anti-Spike-1-RBD IgM antibody (CovIgM-ELISA) in well-defined serum/plasma panel for screening and identifying subjects infected with SARS-CoV-2 in a Latin population. We found that, compared to the RT-PCR as standard method, the in-house CovIgM-ELISA displayed sensitivities of 96.15% and 93.22% for samples collected up to 30 or 60 days after infection, respectively, as well as 95.59% specificity with 97.3% accuracy. The agreement kappa value of our CovIgM-ELISA was substantial when compared to RT-PCR (=0.873) and to the anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgM ELISA (InBios Int) ( = 0.684). The IgM levels detected in the population positively correlated with the neutralizing activity against the Wild-type, Alpha and Delta variants of concern but failed to neutralize Omicron. These data indicate that our in-house CovIgM-ELISA is a compatible performing assay for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Funding Sources 1U01CA260541-01 (NCI/NIAID); 2020-00272 (PR-STRT), 2024-000450 (PR-DDE) Topic Categories Viral Immunology (VIR)