• Xinchun Chen, Boping Zhou, Meizhong Li, Xiaorong Liang, Huosheng Wang, Guilin Yang, Hui Wang, and Xiaohua Le.
• Shenzhen Municipal Hospital of Infectious Disease, Shenzhen, Guangdong, People's Republic of China. chenxinchun@hotmail.com.
• J. Infect. Dis. 2004 Apr 1; 189 (7): 1158-63.

BackgroundSevere acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a novel infectious disease. No information is currently available on host-specific immunity against the SARS coronavirus (CoV), and detailed characteristics of the epidemiology of SARS CoV infection have not been identified.MethodsELISA was used to detect antibody to SARS CoV. Reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction was used to detect SARS CoV RNA. T cells in peripheral blood of patients were quantified by flow cytometry.ResultsOf 36 patients with probable SARS CoV infection, 30 (83.3%) were positive for IgG antibody to SARS CoV; in contrast, only 3 of 48 patients with suspected SARS CoV infection, 0 of 112 patients with fever but without SARS, and 0 of 96 healthy control individuals were positive for it. IgG antibody to SARS CoV was first detected between day 5 and day 47 after onset of illness (mean +/- SD, 18.7+/-10.4).ConclusionDetection of antibody to SARS CoV is useful in the diagnosis of SARS; however, at the incubation and initial phases of the illness, serological assay is of little value, because of late seroconversion in most patients.

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