Diagnostic comparison of three fully automated chemiluminescent immunoassay platforms for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies

Parai, Debaprasad; Dash, Girish Chandra; Choudhary, Hari Ram; Peter, Annalisha; Rout, Usha Kiran; Nanda, Rashmi Ranjan; Kshatri, Jaya Singh; Kanungo, Srikanta; Palo, Subrata Kumar; Turuk, Jyotirmayee; Pati, Sanghamitra; Bhattacharya, Dr. Debdutta

The whole world is battling against coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Various strategies are taken to curb the spread of the virus and to move out from the enforced lockdown stage. Serological tests are the neediest diagnostic and surveillance tool to complement the gold standard molecular diagnostic method to track down the transmission rate of SARS-CoV-2. Automated chemiluminescent immunoassay (CLIA) based analyzers become highly demanding platforms both to clinicians and policy makers for the detection anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies. In this study, serum from 594 patients positive for COVID-19 and 100 samples from pre-COVID cases were tested by three automated platforms: Abbott architect i2000SR, Roche cobas e411 and Yhlo iFlash 1800 and their diagnostic accuracy were compared. All three platforms showed high specificity as claimed by manufacturer. Clinical sensitivities of the machines were calculated as 64.48% (58.67-70.3) for Abbott, 80.48% (76.62-84.34) for Roche and 76.94% (72.65-81.23) for Yhlo. The Cohens kappa value was determined from 0.69-0.89 when inter-rater agreements were calculated. The area under the curves (AUC) values demonstrated Roche Cobas e411 as the diagnostically most accurate platform among the three CLIA analyzers.