ABSTRACT
Due to limited access to commercially available flocked nasopharyngeal (NP) and oropharyngeal (OP) swabs during the SARS-COV-2 pandemic, we have evaluated the sensitivity of 3D-printed swabs compared to commercial swabs in a clinical setting. We included 35 subjects with known exposure to SARS-CoV-2. Participants were tested with commercial and prototype NP/OP swab pairs 8 and 22 days after exposure. At day 8, the sensitivity of the prototype was 96% for NP-samples (CI 81-99%) and 91% for OP-samples (CI 72-97%). The sensitivity of the commercial swab was 92% for NP-samples (CI 76-98%) and 91% for OP-samples (CI 72-97%). At day 22, the sensitivities of the commercial swab were 100% for NP-samples (CI 82-100%) and OP-samples (CI 77-100%), whereas sensitivity of the prototype was 61% for NP-samples (CI 39-80%) and 54% for OP-samples (CI 29-77%). In conclusion, the prototype might be an alternative to commercial swabs when used early in the course of infection.
ABSTRACT
Due to the highly variable clinical phenotype of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), deepening the host genetic contribution to severe COVID-19 may further improve our understanding about underlying disease mechanisms. Here, we describe an extended GWAS meta-analysis of 3,260 COVID-19 patients with respiratory failure and 12,483 population controls from Italy, Spain, Norway and Germany, as well as hypothesis-driven targeted analysis of the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) region and chromosome Y haplotypes. We include detailed stratified analyses based on age, sex and disease severity. In addition to already established risk loci, our data identify and replicate two genome-wide significant loci at 17q21.31 and 19q13.33 associated with severe COVID-19 with respiratory failure. These associations implicate a highly pleiotropic ~0.9-Mb 17q21.31 inversion polymorphism, which affects lung function and immune and blood cell counts, and the NAPSA gene, involved in lung surfactant protein production, in COVID-19 pathogenesis.