Comparison of multiplexed platforms for serum cytokine detection in COVID-19 patients

Alamar NULISAseq is a novel commercial platform for highly multiplexed analysis of soluble proteins using a modified proximity ligation assay. We compared Luminex, Olink, and NULISAseq platforms for detection of cytokines and related inflammatory markers in sera from 25 patients with COVID-19 and 8 healthy controls. We analyzed detectability of common targets, correlations between platforms, and identification of differentially expressed targets in COVID-19 patients (versus healthy controls, over time, and with disease severity). We found the highest proportion of detectable targets with NULISAseq, and best correlations between NULISAseq and Olink. Correlations were often better for targets with high detectability. NULISAseq also identified the largest number of significant changes over time in longitudinal COVID-19 samples. Olink identified slightly more differentially expressed targets between healthy and COVID-19 samples, but some of these were, paradoxically, low in detectability in Olink. All three assays were similar in their ability to differentiate COVID-19 severity levels at hospital admission. Overall, our results suggest that NULISAseq is a highly sensitive assay, with good correlation

 

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