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Coronavirus live updates: Accuracy of antibody testing questioned – Scott Gottlieb, ex-FDA Commissioner warned that the tests shouldn’t be relied upon to make “individual decisions.”

Reporter: Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN

UPDATED on 4/22/2020

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✔@SquawkCNBC

<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>

“They stopped short of saying they’re unreliable, but I think that’s a fair statement,” says <a href=”https://twitter.com/ScottGottliebMD?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>@ScottGottliebMD</a&gt;

on FDA opinion of <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/coronavirus?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#coronavirus</a&gt; serology tests. “They’re going to give a very high false positive rate.” <ahref=”https://t.co/iLLg6qOnB9″>pic.twitter.com/iLLg6qOnB9</a></p>&mdash; Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) <a href=”https://twitter.com/SquawkCNBC/status/1252908165554999296?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>April 22, 2020</a></blockquote> https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Published Wed, Apr 22 2020 7:48 AM EDT

7:48 am: Most antibody tests will ‘give a very high false positive rate’

Serology tests, which can detect the presence of coronavirus antibodies and identify whether someone has already been exposed to Covid-19, have a “very high false positive rate,” former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb told CNBC. 

Earlier this week, University of Southern California professor Neeraj Sood, who led a large antibody study in Los Angeles county, claimed the tests they used were very accurate. However, Gottlieb warned that the tests shouldn’t be relied upon to make “individual decisions.”

“They shouldn’t be using these tests to make individual decisions for individual patients,” Gottlieb said. “They’re good for population-level studies and they’re good maybe in certain professions where there’s a very high exposure to coronavirus, but for the general population an antibody test probably isn’t that helpful.” —Will Feuer

SOURCE

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/04/22/coronavirus-latest-updates.html?__twitter_impression=true