Performance of six SARS-CoV-2 RNA detection systems in symptomatic and asymptomatic pediatric and maternal patients

Cameron A Brown; Megan H Amerson-Brown; Aliza Rahman; Charity R Webb; Ila R Singh; James J Dunn

doi:10.2217/fvl-2021-0311

Performance of six SARS-CoV-2 RNA detection systems in symptomatic and asymptomatic pediatric and maternal patients

Future Virol. 2021 Nov:10.2217/fvl-2021-0311. doi: 10.2217/fvl-2021-0311. Epub 2021 Dec 15.

Authors

Cameron A Brown^{1

2}, Megan H Amerson-Brown^{1

2}, Aliza Rahman¹, Charity R Webb¹, Ila R Singh^{1

2}, James J Dunn^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Pathology, Texas Children's Hospital, Houston, TX 77030, USA.
² Department of Pathology & Immunology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA.

Abstract

Aim: This study evaluated the real-world performance of six test systems for detection of SARS-CoV-2 in 138 pediatric and 110 adult maternal patients. Materials & methods: Nasopharyngeal swabs were tested directly using the Aptima™ SARS-CoV-2 (Aptima) and Simplexa™ COVID-19 Direct (Simplexa), and with Altona RealStar^® RT-PCR and CDC RT-PCR with nucleic acid extracted on the Roche^® MagNA Pure 96 (Altona-MP96) or bioMérieux EMAG^® (Altona-EMAG). Results/Conclusion: Overall percent-positive and percent-negative agreements among the six test systems were, respectively: Aptima: 94.8 and 100%; Altona-MP96: 96.5 and 99.3%; CDC-MP96: 100 and 99.3%; Altona-EMAG: 86.1 and 100%; CDC-EMAG: 98.2 and 100%; Simplexa: 87 and 99.2%. The six test systems showed agreement ranging from 92.7 (κ = 0.85) to 98.8% (κ = 0.98).

Keywords: RNA extraction; RT-PCR; SARS coronavirus; respiratory infection; surveillance.