1. SARS-CoV-2 epidemiological trend before vaccination era: a seroprevalence study in Apulia, Southern Italy, in 2020.
- Author
-
Marchi, Serena, Coppola, Chiara, Piu, Pietro, Benincasa, Linda, Dapporto, Francesca, Manenti, Alessandro, Viviani, Simonetta, Montomoli, Emanuele, and Trombetta, Claudia Maria
- Subjects
VIRAL antibodies ,IMMUNOGLOBULINS ,ENZYME-linked immunosorbent assay ,COVID-19 vaccines ,DESCRIPTIVE statistics ,RESEARCH ,SEROPREVALENCE ,CONFIDENCE intervals ,COVID-19 pandemic ,COVID-19 - Abstract
Aim: The present study aimed at assessing the prevalence of antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 in the general population in the province of Bari (Apulia region, Southern Italy) during the year 2020. Subject and methods: In this study, 1325 serum samples collected from January to December 2020 were tested for the presence of IgM and IgG antibodies against whole-virus SARS-CoV-2 antigen by commercial ELISA. Positive samples were further tested by in-house ELISA for the detection of anti-receptor binding domain (RBD) IgM and IgG antibodies and by micro-neutralization (MN) assay for the detection of neutralizing antibody. Results: One hundred (7.55%) samples had the presence of at least one antibody class against SARS-CoV-2 by commercial ELISA, of which 88 (6.6%) showed IgG and 19 (1.4%) showed IgM antibodies. The proportion of samples with IgG antibodies increased from 1.9% in January–February to 9.6% in November–December, while no significant increase was observed for IgM. When tested by in-house ELISA and MN assay, 17.0% and 31.6% were found positive to RBD IgG and RBD IgM, respectively, while 12.0% showed neutralizing antibody. Conclusion: The proportion of samples with SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibodies increased during 2020, especially in the second half of the year, consistent with data reported by the routine epidemiological surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 cases. Despite the high number of reported cases, the seroprevalence values are relatively low, and only a small proportion of samples had neutralizing antibodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2024
- Full Text
- View/download PDF