Competitive ELISA for the Detection of Serum Antibodies Specific for Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV)

• Published in: Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) Vol. 2203; p. 55
• Main Author: Fukushi, Shuetsu
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English; Japanese
• Published: United States 2020
• Subjects: Animals; Antibodies, Monoclonal; Antibodies, Viral - blood; Coronavirus Infections - diagnosis; Cross Reactions; Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay - instrumentation; Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay - methods; Humans; Mice, Inbred BALB C; Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus - immunology; MERS-coronavirus; Serological assay; Monoclonal antibody; Competitive ELISA; Neutralizing antibody
• ISSN: 1940-6029
• DOI: 10.1007/978-1-0716-0900-2_4

Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) is the etiological agent of MERS, a severe respiratory disease first reported in the Middle East in 2012. Serological assays are used to diagnose MERS-CoV infection and to screen for serum antibodies in seroepidemiological studies. The conventional enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) is the preferred tool for detecting serum antibodies specific for pathogens; however, the utility of conventional ELISA with respect to detection of MERS-CoV antibodies is limited due to the number of false-positives caused by cross-reactivity of serum antibodies with antigens that are conserved among coronaviruses. The competitive ELISA (cELISA) uses a pathogen-specific monoclonal antibody (MAb) that competes with serum antibodies for binding to an antigen; therefore, it is used widely for serological surveillance of many pathogens. In this chapter, I describe detection of serum antibodies using cELISA based on MAbs specific for MERS-CoV.