antibody testing
New Online Resource Shows How You Can Help to Fight COVID-19
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
There are lots of useful online resources to learn about COVID-19 and some of the clinical studies taking place across the country. What’s been missing is a one-stop online information portal that pulls together the most current information for people of all groups, races, ethnicities, and backgrounds who want to get involved in fighting the pandemic. So, I’m happy to share that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in coordination with NIH and Operation Warp Speed, has just launched a website called Combat COVID.
This easy-to-navigate portal makes it even easier for you and your loved ones to reach informed decisions about your health and to find out how to help in the fight against COVID-19. Indeed, it shows that no matter your current experience with COVID-19, there are opportunities to get involved to develop vaccines and medicines that will help everyone. Hundreds of thousands of volunteers have already taken this step—but we still need more, so we are seeking your help.
The Combat COVID website, which can also be viewed in Spanish, is organized to guide you to the most relevant information based on your own COVID-19 status:
• If you’ve never had COVID-19, you’ll be directed to information about joining the COVID-19 Prevention Network’s Volunteer Screening Registry. This registry is creating a list of potential volunteers willing to take part in ongoing or future NIH clinical trials focused on preventing COVID-19—like vaccines. Why get involved in a clinical trial now if vaccines will be widely distributed in the future? Well, there’s still a long way to go to get the pandemic under control, and several promising vaccines are still undergoing definitive testing. Your best route to getting access to a vaccine right now might be a clinical trial. And the more vaccines that are found to be safe and effective, the sooner we will be able to immunize all Americans and many others around the world.
• If you have an active COVID-19 infection, you’ll be directed to information about ongoing clinical trials that are studying better ways to treat the infection with promising drugs and other treatments. There are currently at least nine ongoing clinical trials for adults at every stage of COVID-19 illness. That includes five NIH Accelerating COVID-19 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines (ACTIV) public-private partnership trials. All of these are promising treatments, but need to be rigorously tested to be sure they are safe and effective.
• If you’ve recovered from a confirmed case of COVID-19, you may be able to give the gift of life to someone else. Check out Combat COVID, where you’ll be directed to information about how to donate blood plasma. Once donated, this plasma may be infused into another person to help treat COVID-19 or it may be used to make a potential medicine.
• For doctors treating people with COVID-19, the website also provides a collection of useful information, including details on how to connect patients to ongoing clinical trials and other opportunities to combat COVID-19.
While I’m discussing online resources, NIH’s National Cancer Institute (NCI) also recently launched an interesting website for a critical initiative called the Serological Sciences Network for COVID-19 (SeroNet). A collaboration between several NIH components and 25 of the nation’s top biomedical research institutions, SeroNet will increase the national capacity for antibody testing, while also investigating all aspects of the immune response to SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. That includes studying variations in the severity of COVID-19 symptoms, the influence of pre-existing conditions for developing severe disease, and the chances of reinfection.
In our efforts to combat COVID-19, we’ve come a long way in a short period of time. But there is still plenty of work to do to get the pandemic under control to protect ourselves, our loved ones, and our communities. Be a hero. Follow the three W’s: Wear a mask. Watch your distance (stay 6 feet apart). Wash your hands often. And, if you’d like to find what else you can do to help, follow your way to Combat COVID.
Links:
Coronavirus (COVID-19) (NIH)
Combat COVID (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, D.C.)
Explaining Operation Warp Speed (HHS)
Accelerating COVID-19 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines (ACTIV) (NIH)
Serological Sciences Network for COVID-19 (SeroNet) (National Cancer Institute/NIH)
Study Finds Nearly Everyone Who Recovers From COVID-19 Makes Coronavirus Antibodies
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
There’s been a lot of excitement about the potential of antibody-based blood tests, also known as serology tests, to help contain the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. There’s also an awareness that more research is needed to determine when—or even if—people infected with SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, produce antibodies that may protect them from re-infection.
A recent study in Nature Medicine brings much-needed clarity, along with renewed enthusiasm, to efforts to develop and implement widescale antibody testing for SARS-CoV-2 [1]. Antibodies are blood proteins produced by the immune system to fight foreign invaders like viruses, and may help to ward off future attacks by those same invaders.
In their study of blood drawn from 285 people hospitalized with severe COVID-19, researchers in China, led by Ai-Long Huang, Chongqing Medical University, found that all had developed SARS-CoV-2 specific antibodies within two to three weeks of their first symptoms. Although more follow-up work is needed to determine just how protective these antibodies are and for how long, these findings suggest that the immune systems of people who survive COVID-19 have been be primed to recognize SARS-CoV-2 and possibly thwart a second infection.
Specifically, the researchers determined that nearly all of the 285 patients studied produced a type of antibody called IgM, which is the first antibody that the body makes when fighting an infection. Though only about 40 percent produced IgM in the first week after onset of COVID-19, that number increased steadily to almost 95 percent two weeks later. All of these patients also produced a type of antibody called IgG. While IgG often appears a little later after acute infection, it has the potential to confer sustained immunity.
To confirm their results, the researchers turned to another group of 69 people diagnosed with COVID-19. The researchers collected blood samples from each person upon admission to the hospital and every three days thereafter until discharge. The team found that, with the exception of one woman and her daughter, the patients produced specific antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 within 20 days of their first symptoms of COVID-19.
Meanwhile, innovative efforts are being made on the federal level to advance COVID-19 testing. The NIH just launched the Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) Initiative to support a variety of research activities aimed at improving detection of the virus. As I recently highlighted on this blog, one key component of RADx is a “shark tank”-like competition to encourage science and engineering’s most inventive minds to develop rapid, easy-to-use technologies to test for the presence of SARS-CoV-2.
On the serology testing side, the NIH’s National Cancer Institute has been checking out kits that are designed to detect antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 and have found mixed results. In response, the Food and Drug Administration just issued its updated policy on antibody tests for COVID-19. This guidance sets forth precise standards for laboratories and commercial manufacturers that will help to speed the availability of high-quality antibody tests, which in turn will expand the capacity for rapid and widespread testing in the United States.
Finally, it’s important to keep in mind that there are two different types of SARS-CoV-2 tests. Those that test for the presence of viral nucleic acid or protein are used to identify people who are acutely infected and should be immediately quarantined. Tests for IgM and/or IgG antibodies to the virus, if well-validated, indicate a person has previously been infected with COVID-19 and is now potentially immune. Two very different types of tests—two very different meanings.
There’s still a way to go with both virus and antibody testing for COVID-19. But as this study and others begin to piece together the complex puzzle of antibody-mediated immunity, it will be possible to learn more about the human body’s response to SARS-CoV-2 and home in on our goal of achieving safe, effective, and sustained protection against this devastating disease.
Reference:
[1] Antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2 in patients with COVID-19. Long QX, Huang AI, et al. Nat Med. 2020 Apr 29. [Epub ahead of print]
Links:
Coronaviruses (NIH)
“NIH Begins Study to Quantify Undetected Cases of Coronavirus Infection,” NIH News Release, April 10, 2020.
“NIH mobilizes national innovation initiative for COVID-19 diagnostics,” NIH News Release, April 29, 2020.
Policy for Coronavirus Disease-2019 Tests During the Public Health Emergency (Revised), May 2020 (Food and Drug Administration)
