AI Article Synopsis

  • The COVID-19 pandemic, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, presents significant public health challenges, emphasizing the need for effective testing methods.
  • A new testing method called reverse transcription loop-mediated isothermal amplification (RT-LAMP) shows promise for detecting SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA and requires less complex equipment compared to traditional RT-qPCR testing.
  • In tests conducted on 768 pharyngeal swab samples, the RT-LAMP assay demonstrated high sensitivity (97.5%) and specificity (99.7%), with an innovative swab-to-RT-LAMP protocol achieving good specificity (99.5%) but slightly lower sensitivity (86%).

Article Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) coronavirus is a major public health challenge. Rapid tests for detecting existing SARS-CoV-2 infections and assessing virus spread are critical. Approaches to detect viral RNA based on reverse transcription loop-mediated isothermal amplification (RT-LAMP) have potential as simple, scalable, and broadly applicable testing methods. Compared to RT quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR)-based methods, RT-LAMP assays require incubation at a constant temperature, thus eliminating the need for sophisticated instrumentation. Here, we tested a two-color RT-LAMP assay protocol for detecting SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA using a primer set specific for the gene. We tested our RT-LAMP assay on surplus RNA samples isolated from 768 pharyngeal swab specimens collected from individuals being tested for COVID-19. We determined the sensitivity and specificity of the RT-LAMP assay for detecting SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA. Compared to an RT-qPCR assay using a sensitive primer set, we found that the RT-LAMP assay reliably detected SARS-CoV-2 RNA with an RT-qPCR cycle threshold (CT) number of up to 30, with a sensitivity of 97.5% and a specificity of 99.7%. We also developed a swab-to-RT-LAMP assay that did not require a prior RNA isolation step, which retained excellent specificity (99.5%) but showed lower sensitivity (86% for CT < 30) than the RT-LAMP assay. In addition, we developed a multiplexed sequencing protocol (LAMP-sequencing) as a diagnostic validation procedure to detect and record the outcome of RT-LAMP reactions.

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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7574920PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/scitranslmed.abc7075DOI Listing

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