Background: The COVID-19 pandemic presents great challenges on transmission prevention, and rapid diagnosis is essential to reduce the disease spread. Various diagnostic methods are available to identify an ongoing infection by nasopharyngeal (NPH) swab sampling. However, the procedure requires handling by health care professionals, and therefore limits the application in household and community settings.
Objectives: In this study, we aimed to determine if the detection of SARS-CoV-2 can be performed alternatively on saliva specimens by rapid antigen test.
Study Design: Saliva and NPH specimens were collected from 44 patients with confirmed COVID-19. To assess the diagnostic accuracy of point-of-care SARS-CoV-2 rapid antigen test on saliva specimens, we compared the performance of four test products.
Results: RT-qPCR was performed and NPH and saliva sampling had similar Ct values, which associated with disease duration. All four antigen tests showed similar trend in detecting SARS-CoV-2 in saliva, but with variation in the ability to detect positive cases. The rapid antigen test with the best performance could detect up to 67% of the positive cases with Ct values lower than 25, and disease duration shorter than 10 days.
Conclusion: Our study therefore supports saliva testing as an alternative diagnostic procedure to NPH testing, and that rapid antigen test on saliva provides a potential complement to PCR test to meet increasing screening demand.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/20008686.2021.1993535 | DOI Listing |
Pathophysiology
January 2025
Division of Anatomical Pathology, Department of Pathology, College of Medicine, University of Saskatchewan, Royal University Hospital, 103 Hospital Drive, Saskatoon, SK S7N 0W8, Canada.
: Cause of death analysis is fundamental to forensic pathology. We present the case of a 9½-year-old girl with a genetically confirmed diagnosis of Dravet syndrome who died in her sleep with no evidence of motor seizure. She also had a lifelong history of recurrent pneumonias and, along with her family, had tested positive for COVID-19 10 days before death.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAfr J Prim Health Care Fam Med
December 2024
Department of Internal Medicine, Prince Mshiyeni Memorial Hospital, Durban.
Background: Tuberculosis (TB) remains a leading cause of mortality in low-resource settings and poses a diagnostic challenge in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-negative populations because of limitations in traditional diagnostic methods such as sputum smear microscopy (SSM) and sputum Xpert Ultra. There is a lack of effective, non-invasive diagnostic options for TB diagnosis in HIV-negative populations. This scoping review explores the potential of urinary lipoarabinomannan (ULAM) as a point-of-care diagnostic tool for Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) in HIV-negative individuals.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSci Rep
January 2025
Experimental Pathology Department, National Institute of Medical Sciences and Nutrition Salvador Zubiran, Mexico City, Mexico.
It was a general belief that drug resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) was associated with lesser virulence, particularly rifampicin resistance, which is usually produced by mutations in the RNA polymerase Beta subunit (RpoB). Interestingly, this kind of bacterial mutations affect gene transcription with significant effects on bacterial physiology and metabolism, affecting also the bacterial antigenic constitution that in consequence can produce diverse immune responses and disease outcome. In the present study, we show the results of the Mtb clinical isolate A96, which is resistant to rifampicin and when used to infect BALB/c mice showed hypervirulence, apparently by rapidly polarization of the Th2 immune response through early and high production of IL-4.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFClin Immunol
January 2025
Department of Rheumatology and Immunology, Laboratory of Rheumatology and Immunology, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China. Electronic address:
Background: Patients with anti-melanoma differentiation-associated gene 5-positive dermatomyositis (MDA5 DM) are prone to infections, but there is a lack of rapid methods to assess infection risk, which greatly affects patient prognosis. This study aims to analyze the clinical features of MDA5 DM patients systematically and develop a predictive model for infections.
Methods: Retrospective analysis was performed on clinical data from 118 hospitalized patients with MDA5 DM.
J Low Genit Tract Dis
January 2025
Department of Pathology, Saint Paul's Hospital, Taoyuan, Taiwan.
Objective: Trichomoniasis is a globally prevalent sexually transmitted infection caused by the protozoan Trichomonas vaginalis. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is the gold standard for diagnosing trichomoniasis, but it is expensive. Antigen tests are immunochromatographic immunoassays that detect T.
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