Abstract
Background: With the drastic spread of COVID-19 and mass mortality of people globally, detection of the progression of this disease has stood out to be a necessity. Hence, we set out to identify the prevalence of COVID-19 antibodies in Bangladesh using the in-house rapid pan-immunoglobulin dot-blot test kit and evaluate the performance of this kit. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, we tested serum collected between mid-May and mid-June 2020 for COVID-19 antibodies by using the in-house rapid pan-immunoglobulin dot-blot test kit in RTPCR confirmed patients with symptoms for 1-7 days (Group Ia; n =100) and 8-14 days (Group Ib; n = 100); symptomatic RT-PCR negative patients (Group II; n = 100) and convalescent patients (Group III; n = 109) while comparing with pre-pandemic sera samples collected prior two years to December-2019 (Group IV; n = 100). Results: Our kit detected that almost 70% of the convalescent patients produced antibodies against COVID-19 compared to other groups. However, the group with individuals at the end phase of COVID-19 exhibited the second-highest percentage of seroprevalence (41%). We also observed that though Group II was RT-PCR negative, 20% of them showed COVID-19 antibodies. Conclusion: With a specificity of 96% in our kit, we can say that our kit will be a potential device for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies and to understand herd immunity in Bangladesh. Bangladesh Journal of Medical Science Vol.20(5) 2021 p.131-139
Highlights
Coronaviruses (CoVs), the vast group of Nidovirales order, are enveloped, non-segmented positive-sense RNA viruses comprising 26 to 32 kilobases RNA genomes[1]
The latter is responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, which has claimed more than 4.29 million deaths worldwide[3]
Based on the analyzed statistics from RT-PCR, the data set was classified into three groups; namely, Group I (n-200) comprising of RT-PCR positive symptomatic patients having symptoms for 1-14 days; Group II (n100) involved RT-PCR negative symptomatic patients with symptoms lasting 1-14 days, and Group-III (n109) included of convalescent patients who were RTPCR positive, recovered and passed at least 14 days of symptom-free period
Summary
Coronaviruses (CoVs), the vast group of Nidovirales order, are enveloped, non-segmented positive-sense RNA viruses comprising 26 to 32 kilobases RNA genomes[1] These are known to infect different animal species, including humans. 4. Department of Pharmacy, BRAC University, Dhaka, Bangladesh taste or smell, sore throat, congestion or runny nose, nausea or vomiting, diarrhea, and/or maybe mild to severe lower respiratory tract infections. These symptoms usually appear 2-14 days after being exposed to the virus[4].
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