![]() ![]() Why? Antibody tests only give one view into the body's collection of defenses against the coronavirus. "There are tests that would show that you've been vaccinated or not, but is that going to be the kind of information you need?" "There is no test that will give you that at this point," says Gigi Gronvall, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security who has studied serology testing and COVID-19. And a lack of standardization among the commercially available tests for antibodies makes it even harder to decipher the results. And the decline in antibody levels against the coronavirus among some people who got vaccinated late last year were cited as part of the scientific case for why millions of Americans need booster shots.īut scientists in the field say there's still considerable uncertainty about what these levels of detectable antibodies really mean when it comes to protection. They're also helpful to researchers studying the prevalence of the virus across a population or tracking the degree to which antibody levels wane over time. On an individual level, antibody tests can be useful for picking up evidence of a past SARS-CoV-2 infection. While it could be tempting to consider these tests a measuring stick of your immune response - or lack thereof - researchers and doctors say your protection against the virus still can't be boiled down to antibody levels in a simple blood test. You might think that high enough levels of antibodies mean you don't need that booster, right? Eh, not so fast. Others can actually give you scores that reflect your levels. ![]() Some tests just let you know if you have them - or not. There are dozens of tests on the market that scan blood samples from a blood draw or a finger prick for the presence of these antibodies. Ghady Haidar, a transplant infectious diseases physician at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. "I know a lot of people, even outside of studies, are just getting their antibody levels done," says Dr. And while the Food and Drug Administration does not currently recommend antibody tests to assess immunity, that isn't stopping some people. ![]() Unlike other COVID-19 tests that are used to diagnose an active infection, these antibody tests are aimed at finding evidence of your body's immune response to a past infection with the virus, but they can also pick up certain antibodies that your body generated in response to the vaccine. ![]()
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