Assessment of the feasibility of pool testing for SARS-CoV-2 infection screening.

Background: SARS-CoV-2 pandemic represented a huge challenge for national health systems worldwide. Pooling nasopharyngeal (NP) swabs seems to be a promising strategy, saving time and resources, but it could reduce the sensitivity of the RT-PCR and exacerbate samples management in terms of automation and tracing. In this study, taking advantage of the routine implementation of a screening plan on health workers, we evaluated the feasibility of pool testing for SARS-CoV-2 infection diagnosis in the presence of low viral load samples.

Implementation of a centralized HPV-based cervical cancer screening programme in Tuscany: First round results and comparison with the foregoing Pap-based screening programme.

Objective: To evaluate performance of the first round of HPV-based screening in Tuscany region and compare it with the prior round of Pap-based screening.

Setting: Tuscany region of Italy, where HPV-based cervical cancer screening started in 2013, with a strong level of centralization screening tests at the Regional Laboratory for Cancer Prevention (ISPRO).

Methods: The transition from Pap- to HPV-based screening was initiated for older women and at 3 out of 12 Tuscany Local Health Units (LHUs).

Pool testing on random and natural clusters of individuals: Optimisation of SARS-CoV-2 surveillance in the presence of low viral load samples.

Facing the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic requires intensive testing on the population to early identify and isolate infected subjects. During the first emergency phase of the epidemic, RT-qPCR on nasopharyngeal (NP) swabs, which is the most reliable technique to detect ongoing infections, exhibited limitations due to availability of reagents and budget constraints. This stressed the need to develop screening procedures that require fewer resources and are suitable to be extended to larger portions of the population.

Hybrid capture 2 and cobas® 4800: Comparison of performance of two clinically validated tests for human papillomavirus primary screening of cervical cancer.

Objective: To compare, in a primary human papillomavirus screening setting, two different validated human papillomavirus tests, considering their analytical and clinical screening performances.

Methods: In Tuscany, a human papillomavirus screening program was implemented in 2013. Hybrid capture 2 (Qiagen) was used for testing until May 2016, when it was replaced by the cobas 4800 human papillomavirus test (Cobas; Roche).

Human papilloma virus genotyping for the cross-sectional and longitudinal probability of developing cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade 2 or more.

Human papilloma virus (HPV) testing is more sensitive but less specific than cytology. We evaluated stand-alone genotyping as a possible triage method. During a multicentre randomised controlled trial comparing HPV testing to conventional cytology, HPV-positive women were referred to colposcopy and followed up if no high-grade lesion was detected.