This article is a Preprint
Preprints are preliminary research reports that have not been certified by peer review. They should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Preprints posted online allow authors to receive rapid feedback and the entire scientific community can appraise the work for themselves and respond appropriately. Those comments are posted alongside the preprints for anyone to read them and serve as a post publication assessment.
DEVELOPMENT AND TESTING OF A LOW-COST INACTIVATION BUFFER THAT ALLOWS DIRECT SARS-COV-2 DETECTION IN SALIVA (preprint)
medrxiv; 2021.
Preprint
in English
| medRxiv | ID: ppzbmed-10.1101.2021.11.26.21266918
ABSTRACT
Massive testing is a cornerstone in efforts to effectively track infections and stop COVID-19 transmission, including places where good vaccination coverage has been achieved. However, SARS-CoV-2 testing by RT-qPCR requires specialized personnel, protection equipment, commercial kits, and dedicated facilities, which represent significant challenges for massive testing implementation in resource-limited settings. It is therefore important to develop testing protocols that facilitate implementation and are inexpensive, fast, and sufficiently sensitive. In this work, we optimized the composition of a buffer (PKTP) containing a protease, a detergent, and an RNase inhibitor, that is compatible with the RT-qPCR chemistry, allowing for direct testing of SARS-CoV-2 from saliva in an RNA extraction-independent manner. This buffer is compatible with heat-inactivation reducing the biohazard risk of handling the samples. We assessed the PKTP buffer performance in comparison to the RNA-extraction-based protocol of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in saliva samples from 70 COVID-19 patients finding a good sensitivity (82.2% for the N1 and 84.4% for the N2 target, respectively) and correlations (R=0.77, p<0.001 for N1, and R=0.78, p<0.001 for N2). We also propose an auto-collection protocol for saliva samples and a multiplex reaction to reduce the number of PCR reactions per patient and further reduce overall costs while maintaining diagnostic standards in favor of massive testing.
Full text:
Available
Collection:
Preprints
Database:
medRxiv
Main subject:
COVID-19
Language:
English
Year:
2021
Document Type:
Preprint
Similar
MEDLINE
...
LILACS
LIS