[The quantitative detection of anti-coronavirus antibody titer in medical personnel closely contacted with severe acute respiratory syndrome patients].

Liu, You-ning; Fan, Bao-xing; Fang, Xiang-qun; Yu, Bing-xiang; Chen, Liang-an

OBJECTIVE To study the serum anti-coronavirus antibody titer in medical personnel who had closely contacted with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) patients. METHODS The serum anti-coronavirus IgG antibody titer in medical personnel who had closely contacted with SARS patients, healthy individuals, patients with community acquired pneumonia and patients recovered from SARS was detected by using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) method. The antibody titer was expressed as the value of absorbency (A) with common logarithm conversion. RESULTS The serum anti-coronavirus IgG antibody titer in patients recovered from SARS was 0.07 +/- 0.13, which was significantly higher as compared with those in other groups. The antibody titer in medical personnel was -1.18 +/- 0.20, which was also significantly higher as compared with those in community acquired pneumonia patients and healthy persons. In the healthy persons, the antibody titer of serum samples obtained from Beijing in May, 2003 was -1.61 +/- 0.13, which was significantly higher than that of samples obtained from Beijing in 2001 when SARS was not found -1.76 +/- 0.25 and that of samples from Shandong province where SARS was not found in May, 2003 -1.95 +/- 0.44. There was no significant difference in the antibody titer between patients of bacterial pneumonia and patients of atypical pneumonia, which was -1.99 +/- 0.31 and -2.05 +/- 0.23 respectively. CONCLUSION Close contact with SARS patients can cause the serum anti-coronavirus antibody titer to increase significantly in medical personnel, a phenomenon deserves further study.