ABSTRACT
Rapid and accessible testing was paramount in the management of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our university established KCL TEST: a SARS-CoV-2 asymptomatic testing programme that enabled sensitive and accessible PCR testing of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in saliva. Here, we describe our learnings and provide our blueprint for launching diagnostic laboratories, particularly in low-resource settings. Between December 2020 and July 2022, we performed 158277 PCRs for our staff, students, and their household contacts, free of charge. Our average turnaround time was 16 h and 37 min from user registration to result delivery. KCL TEST combined open-source automation and in-house non-commercial reagents, which allows for rapid implementation and repurposing. Importantly, our data parallel those of the UK Office for National Statistics, though we detected a lower positive rate and virtually no delta wave. Our observations strongly support regular asymptomatic community testing as an important measure for decreasing outbreaks and providing safe working spaces. Universities can therefore provide agile, resilient, and accurate testing that reflects the infection rate and trend of the general population. Our findings call for the early integration of academic institutions in pandemic preparedness, with capabilities to rapidly deploy highly skilled staff, as well as develop, test, and accommodate efficient low-cost pipelines.
ABSTRACT
PURPOSE: Mismatch repair (MMR) is one of the DNA repair systems that correct mispaired bases during DNA replication errors. Polymorphisms in genes can increase susceptibility to the development of prostate cancer (PCa). In this study, we investigated mutL homolog 1 (MLH1) -93G>A (rs1800734) and mutS homolog 3 (MSH3) (rs26279) polymorphisms with the risk of PCa. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In this study of Iranian population, 175 histopathologically confirmed (PCa) patients and 230 benign prostate hyperplasia (BPH) as the controls were recruited. The genotypes of MLH1 and MSH3 were determined by polymerase chain reaction and restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) method. RESULTS: There was no significant difference of MLH1 (P = 0.4) and MSH3 (P?=?0.5) genotype distributions among PCa cases and controls. And also patients with PCa were not significant differences compared to those without in stage of cancer, grade of tumor, perineural invasion, and vascular invasion. CONCLUSION: Our results did not show adequate evidence for any significant association of MLH1 and MSH3 polymorphisms and PCa .
