AUTHOR=Gong Fanwu , Wei Hua-xing , Li Qiangsheng , Liu Liu , Li Bofeng TITLE=Evaluation and Comparison of Serological Methods for COVID-19 Diagnosis JOURNAL=Frontiers in Molecular Biosciences VOLUME=8 YEAR=2021 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/molecular-biosciences/articles/10.3389/fmolb.2021.682405 DOI=10.3389/fmolb.2021.682405 ISSN=2296-889X ABSTRACT=

The worldwide pandemic of COVID-19 has become a global public health crisis. Various clinical diagnosis methods have been developed to distinguish COVID-19–infected patients from healthy people. The nucleic acid test is the golden standard for virus detection as it is suitable for early diagnosis. However, due to the low amount of viral nucleic acid in the respiratory tract, the sensitivity of nucleic acid detection is unsatisfactory. As a result, serological screening began to be widely used with the merits of simple procedures, lower cost, and shorter detection time. Serological tests currently include the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), lateral flow immunoassay (LFIA), and chemiluminescence immunoassay (CLIA). This review describes various serological methods, discusses the performance and diagnostic effects of different methods, and points out the problems and the direction of optimization, to improve the efficiency of clinical diagnosis. These increasingly sophisticated and diverse serological diagnostic technologies will help human beings to control the spread of COVID-19.