Studying temporal titre evolution of commercial SARS-CoV-2 assays reveals significant shortcomings of using BAU standardization for comparison.

Background: Measuring specific anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies has become one of the main epidemiological tools to survey the ongoing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, but also vaccination response. The WHO made available a set of well-characterized samples derived from recovered individuals to allow normalization between different quantitative anti-Spike assays to defined Binding Antibody Units (BAU).

Methods: To assess sero-responses longitudinally, a cohort of ninety-nine SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR positive subjects was followed up together with forty-five vaccinees without previous infection but with two vaccinations.

Ectopic cervical thymic tissue: can imaging obviate biopsy and surgical removal?

Thymic tissue rests can be found all along the route of thymic descent from the neck into the anterior mediastinum and are frequently misinterpreted as pathological masses, which leads to biopsy or surgical removal. We present a case of ectopic thymic tissue in the neck and review the imaging characteristics of our patient and those found in the literature to determine if biopsy for this normal variation can be avoided. US findings of ectopic tissue reveal the exact tissue characteristics of normal thymus.