A Systematic and Meta-Analysis Review on the Diagnostic Accuracy of Antibodies in the Serological Diagnosis of COVID-19.

Abstract Background: Serological testing based on different antibody types are an alternative method being used to diagnose SARS-CoV-2 and has the potential of having higher diagnostic accuracy compared to the current gold standard RT-PCR. Therefore, the objective of this review was to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of IgG and IgM based Point-of-care (POC) lateral flow immunoassays (LFIA), chemiluminescence enzyme immunoassay (CLIA), fluorescence enzyme-linked immunoassay (FIA) and ELISA systems that detect SARS-CoV-2 antigens.Method: A systematic literature search was carried out in PubMed, Medline complete and MedRxiv. Studies evaluating the diagnostic accuracy of serological assays for SARS-CoV-2 were eligible. Study selection and data-extraction were done by two authors independently. QUADAS-2 checklist tool was used to assess the quality of the studies. The bivariate model and the hierarchical summary receiver operating characteristic curve model were performed to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of the serological tests. Subgroup meta-analysis analyses was performed to explore the heterogeneity. Results: The pooled sensitivity for IgG, IgM and IgG-IgM based LFIA tests were 0.5856, 0.4637 and 0.6886 respectively compared to RT-PCR method. The pooled sensitivity for IgG and IgM based CLIA tests were 0.9311 and 0.8516 respectively compared to RT-PCR. The pooled sensitivity the IgG, IgM and IgG-IgM based ELISA tests were 0.8292, 0.8388 and 0.8531 respectively compared to RT-PCR. All tests displayed high specificities ranging from 0.9693 to 0.9991. Among the evaluated tests, IgG based CLIA expressed the highest sensitivity signifying its accurate detection of the largest proportion of infections identified by RT-PCR. ELISA and CLIA tests performed better in terms of sensitivity compared to LFIA. IgG based tests performed better compared to IgM ones expect for the ELISA. Conclusions: We report that IgG-IgM based ELISA tests have the best overall diagnostic test accuracy. Moreover, irrespective of the method, a combined IgG/IgM test seems to be a better choice in terms of sensitivity than measuring either antibody type independently. Given the poor performances of the current LFIA devices there is need for more research on the development of highly sensitivity and specific POC LFIA that are adequate for most individual patient applications and attractive for large sero-prevalence studies.Systematic review registration: PROSPERO Registration Number is: CRD42020179112