gms | German Medical Science

International Conference on SARS - one year after the (first) outbreak

08. - 11.05.2004, Lübeck

Evaluation of antibody responses against SARS coronaviral nucleocapsid or spike proteins by immunoblotting or ELISA

Talk

  • Li-Rung Huang - Graduate Institute of Microbiology
  • Chi-Ming Chiu - Graduate Institute of Clinical Medicine, National Taiwan University College of Medicine, Taipei, Taiwan
  • Shiou-Hwei Yeh - Division of Molecular and Genomic Medicine, National Health Research Institutes, Taipei, Taiwan
  • Wen-Hung Huang - Graduate Institute of Clinical Medicine, National Taiwan University College of Medicine, Taipei, Taiwan
  • Po-Ren Hsueh - Department of Internal Medicine, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan
  • Jyh-Yuan Yang - Center for Disease Control, Taipei, Taiwan
  • Ih-Jen Su - Center for Disease Control, Taipei, Taiwan
  • Shan-Chwen Chang - Department of Internal Medicine, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan
  • corresponding author presenting/speaker Pei-Jer Chen - Graduate Institute of Microbiology; Department of Internal Medicine, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan; Graduate Institute of Clinical Medicine, National Taiwan University College of Medicine, Taipei, Taiwan

International Conference on SARS - one year after the (first) outbreak. Lübeck, 08.-11.05.2004. Düsseldorf, Köln: German Medical Science; 2004. Doc04sars8.05

Die elektronische Version dieses Artikels ist vollständig und ist verfügbar unter: http://www.egms.de/de/meetings/sars2004/04sars041.shtml

Veröffentlicht: 26. Mai 2004

© 2004 Huang et al.
Dieser Artikel ist ein Open Access-Artikel und steht unter den Creative Commons Lizenzbedingungen (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/deed.de). Er darf vervielfältigt, verbreitet und öffentlich zugänglich gemacht werden, vorausgesetzt dass Autor und Quelle genannt werden.


Gliederung

Text

Background: SARS-CoV is a newly emerging virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) with high mortality rate in infected people. To study the humoral responses against SARS-CoV, we evaluated nucleocapsid (N) and spike (S) proteins-specific antibodies in patients' sera by western blotting and ELISA.

Methods: Recombinant N and S proteins of SARS-CoV were purified from transformed E. coli. Serum specimens from forty SARS-CoV-infected patients in the convalescent phase were analyzed by western blotting using the purified antigens. Serial serum specimens from twelve RT-PCR confirmed SARS patients were assayed by ELISA using the recombinant N protein as coated antigen.

Results: By western blotting, 97.5% of the SARS patients were positive for N protein-specific antibodies whereas only 47.5% of the samples were positive for S protein-specific antibodies. Using N protein-based ELISA, ten out of the twelve patients were positive for N protein-specific antibodies and six of them showed seroconversion at mean of 16 days after onset of fever.

Conclusions: Immunoblotting was useful for detecting the humoral immune response after SARS-CoV infection. Antibodies against SARS-CoV N protein appear at the early stage of infection, therefore, N protein-based ELISA could serve as a simple, sensitive and specific test for diagnosing SARS-CoV infection.