Validation of Dried Blood Spot Sample Modifications to Two Commercially Available Covid-19 Igg Antibody Immunoassays

Abstract

<b>Aim:</b> Coronavirus disease 2019 antibody testing often relies on venous blood collection, which is labor-intensive, inconvenient and expensive compared with finger-stick capillary dried blood spot (DBS) collection. The purpose of our work was to determine if two commercially available anti-severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays for IgG antibodies against spike S1 subunit and nucleocapsid proteins could be validated for use with DBS. <b>Materials & methods:</b> Kit supplied reagents were used to extract DBS, and in-house DBS calibrators were included on every run. <b>Results:</b> Positive/negative concordance between DBS and serum was 100/99.3% for the spike S1 subunit assay and 100/98% for the nucleocapsid assay. <b>Conclusion:</b> Validation of the DBS Coronavirus disease 2019 IgG antibody assays demonstrated that serum and DBS can produce equivalent results with minimal kit modifications.