Getting tested tomorrow
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My hospital is running a clinical trial testing serology for corona antibodies, comparing Covid positive, covid recovered, and control group asymptomatic hospital staff, who were working the past two months with the general hospital population.
Tomorrow morning swab and blood draw. Results in a few days.
Curious to see how many of us asymtomaticsmay have antibodies.
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When you shake someone's deep sense of self-worth, leaving a scar in their ego, they will persistently try to diminish you through petty arguments & obsessive captious criticism of your actions, just to soothe the wound.
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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@jon-nyc said in Getting tested tomorrow:
Is the trial to get a handle on specificity and sensitivity of the antibody test?
That’s what I imagine. The consent form said it’s to validate the serologic assay they are using.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/05/world/middleeast/coronavirus-israel-antibody-testing.html
I wonder if my blood draw was prequel to this population survey. anyway should have my results by next week.
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well, its been a while and i never got back with the results, and the reason is a bit complicated.
the clinical testing is still going on...turns out many many issues are being looked at, besides kit validations, interpreting results, quantitative assays (not just positive or negative but antibody titres, time between titres etc)
initially we heard that everyone in my department was negative and i sort of left it at that, but i got a call two weeks ago, from our infectious disease unit, and they needed to draw more blood specifically from me, because they had to be clear about something, no clear details were given, but as the clinical study was ongoing, I was told just wait, and they will get back to me.
so today they got back to me.
Im positive for IgA immunoglobulin to SARS-CoV-2.
the second blood draw was to confirm that it wasn't a false positive. and was done 70 days after the first blood draw. results were compared, and the original serum was also retested and also reconfirmed. meaning
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i have had a past exposure to COVID-19
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the immunoglobulin positive is IgA.
Im not going to give a long immunology lecture, but IgA is the antibody of mucous membranes. the more commonly tested Igs are IgM (acute phase antibody) and IgG (longer term antibodies) which are what commonly tested in most commercial kits (im negative on both)
its is unclear what the significance of this is,, although there have been some recent studies looking at this phenomenon.
an immunologist friend of mine has suggested (and ive seen this confirmed in some of my reading) that its possible that upon exposure, the IgA response was strong enough on the mucosal membranes (mucosa includes the lining of respiratory and GI tract) that the virus wasnt able to actually become systemic and cause systemic symptoms, (fever, malaise etc and onto sepsis) thus no IgM or IgG antibodies developed in my serum.
what this means for long term immunity remains to be seen, the hospital lab is now going to co-react my sera with lymphocytes to see if it causes cellular immunity (again no immuno lecture here, basically to see if the antibodies in my serum cause T cells to become killers) seems they have a few cases like mine, asymptomatics with positive IgA.
i think they are putting together a lot of serological data for a big paper. i guess i cant be an author but maybe i can stick it on my CV as a guinea pig subject.
my immunologist friend assured me that IgA confers immune memory for subsequent exposures, but who knows...
as i read in one place...
**The high IgA in the former situation may rapidly neutralize the virus in the respiratory mucous membrane and so prevent a complete adaptive immune response. The researchers suggest that perhaps this may be due to the early activation of pre-existing innate or natural IgM antibodies, or cross-reactive antibodies, from memory B cells that quickly undergo a class switch to IgA instead. However, if this early rise in IgA is lacking, the virus can survive longer and induce germinal center differentiation in the local lymph nodes.
Thus, asymptomatic COVID-19 might be like bat coronavirus infection, controlled by NK cells and natural antibodies. In severe disease, the adaptive immune response is more robust and more diffuse. Only more research can tell if and how long specific memory persists in patients with mild or asymptomatic disease.**
Mrs Bach has started calling me batman
some references:
https://erj.ersjournals.com/content/early/2020/05/07/13993003.01526-2020
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7245198/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41423-020-0474-z
well, there you go. I have never had any known COVID exposures. ( i also have my telephone App monitorng locations 24/7) the only thing that maybe rings a bell, was that Mrs Bach had a cough in February (!) before we had any reported cases. around the time that Italy started reporting cases as Wuhan was declining. so maybe that was it? she hasnt been tested.
either way, im still wearing a mask, being careful, and im not licking the ER floor, as Jolly once put it.
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@bachophile said in Getting tested tomorrow:
p monitorng locations 24/7) the only thing that maybe rings a bell, was that Mrs Bach had a cough in February (!) before we had any reported cases. around the time that Italy started reporting cases as Wuhan was declining. so maybe that was it? she hasnt been tested.
either way, im still wearing a mask, being careful, and im not licking the ER floor, as Jolly once put it.What's the appropriate response? Congratulations for having been asymptomatic? Glad you're well? Hope you've received some immunity? Does Hallmark make anything for these situations?
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Infectious disease doc said go home and open a bottle of champagne but wear a mask.
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Fascinating.
Folks don't get tested for IgA. Most run of the mill antibody stuff is IgM/IgG.
You're special! (And your study guys are good).
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My doctor told me to not bother with the antibody test. What does it really change? We still don't really know how much (if any) immunity it confers. Also, it looks like the antibodies fade so quickly in many cases that it doesn't even really give you an idea of spread.
Quite a few friends and colleagues came down with something at NAMM (Late January) or shortly after that sounded a LOT like COVID. Several of them have now had the antibody test and they came back negative, but we don't really know...
Me/rry/Christmas
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@LuFins-Dad said in Getting tested tomorrow:
My doctor told me to not bother with the antibody test. What does it really change? We still don't really know how much (if any) immunity it confers. Also, it looks like the antibodies fade so quickly in many cases that it doesn't even really give you an idea of spread.
Based on my extensive, zero years of medical training, I think that if you have had the virus before and have recovered, your body would at least on some level be able to combat the virus more easily a second time. The docs here can correct me if I'm wrong, but I kinda doubt that this is the sort of illness where you start from zero every time you get infected.
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@Aqua-Letifer well that in a nutshell, is really what no one knows.
Antibody titres definitely can go down with time. What is not clear is the degree of immune memory. Meaning does subsequent exposure elicit a stronger and quicker response.
It’s possible. But it’s also possible that it doesn’t happen. Which is why for some vaccines, once is enough. And others require boosts along the way. Tetanus is boosted very ten years. Also pertussis is boosted.
We may need corona shots every year. No one really has a fucking clue.
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@bachophile said in Getting tested tomorrow:
@Aqua-Letifer well that in a nutshell, is really what no one knows.
We may need corona shots every year. No one really has a fucking clue.
Then I’m covered
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@bachophile said in Getting tested tomorrow:
We may need corona shots every year. No one really has a fucking clue.
Hell I'd go in once a month, I don't give a shit.
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@bachophile said in Getting tested tomorrow:
Infectious disease doc said go home and open a bottle of champagne but wear a mask.
let us know how that works out. Filtred champagne.
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@bachophile Interesting. Make sure you "trademark" your sera
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@Aqua-Letifer said in Getting tested tomorrow:
@LuFins-Dad said in Getting tested tomorrow:
My doctor told me to not bother with the antibody test. What does it really change? We still don't really know how much (if any) immunity it confers. Also, it looks like the antibodies fade so quickly in many cases that it doesn't even really give you an idea of spread.
Based on my extensive, zero years of medical training, I think that if you have had the virus before and have recovered, your body would at least on some level be able to combat the virus more easily a second time. The docs here can correct me if I'm wrong, but I kinda doubt that this is the sort of illness where you start from zero every time you get infected.
I have twice as much experience as you.
It seems to me if the immune system makes it go away without symptoms, you should be able to do it again. Even if the immune system doesn't remember it. Assuming the original conditions still exist.
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That's fascinating, bach. Post any additional information you can, too
LuFinn, hubby and I also were ill in February with symptoms exactly like what we later learned were common for COVID. Got tested much later, as in three months later, and no antibodies detected. I still think we could have had it. Probably will never know.
