ELISA is a highly efficient test tool applied primarily in medicine but also in veterinary practice, agriculture, and environmental and food safety. The other use of this antibody-based test can be found in drug rehabilitation centers and everyday life–for pregnancy detection. In the first case, the test is done via urine screening; ELISA proves to be effective in recognizing a variety of drug substances. Yet, research suggests that it tends to demonstrate false-positive results for several types of illegal drugs, which supposes a slight inaccuracy of the method (Abbott et al., 2021). The same problem emerges when conducting pregnancy tests by detecting human chorionic gonadotropin in urine using ELISA; yet, the reason for the impreciseness lies in the chronic illnesses of the tested people and can be eliminated preliminary to the test (Freis et al., 2018). Thus, ELISA is helpful for testing in the mentioned cases, although some issues might contaminate the result of the analysis.
The similarity between a pregnancy test, the COVID-19 rapid test, and the COVID-19 antibody test seems to be the existence of false positives and negatives. Namely, there are multiple recorded cases when the mentioned tests demonstrated incorrect results that provoked improper diagnoses (Freis et al., 2018; Heyming et al., 2021). These ambiguities are usually discovered by applying other testing methods to confirm a tested person’s condition.
The ELISA testing implies using different types of molecules for each of its analysis applications. For example, a pregnancy test requires the measurement of human chorionic gonadotropin in urine (Freis et al., 2018). In turn, the COVID-19 rapid test includes the immunoglobulin A and immunoglobulin G molecules for a proper assessment (Bisoffi et al., 2020). Finally, for the COVID-19 antibody test, immunoglobulin G might be used (Bisoffi et al., 2020). Therefore, the three tests employ various materials for the analysis.
References
Abbott, D. L., Limoges, J. F., Virkler, K. J., Tracy, S. J., & Sarris, G. G. (2021). ELISA screens for fentanyl in urine are susceptible to False-Positives in high concentration methamphetamine samples.Journal of Analytical Toxicology. Web.
Bisoffi, Z., Pomari, E., Deiana, M., Piubelli, C., Ronzoni, N., Beltrame, A., Bertoli, G., Riccardi, N., Perandin, F., Formenti, F., Gobbi, F., Buonfrate, D., & Silva, R. (2020). Sensitivity, specificity and predictive values of molecular and serological tests for COVID-19: A longitudinal study in emergency room.Diagnostics, 10(9), 669. Web.
Freis, A., Schlegel, J., Daniel, V., Jauckus, J., Strowitzki, T., & Germeyer, A. (2018). Cytokines in relation to hCG are significantly altered in asymptomatic women with miscarriage – a pilot study.Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology, 16(1). Web.
Heyming, T., Bacon, K., Lara, B., Knudsen-Robbins, C., Tongol, A., & Sanger, T. (2021). SARS-CoV-2 serology testing in an asymptomatic, at-risk population: Methods, results, pitfalls.Infectious Disease Reports, 13(4), 910–916. Web.