Article Text
PDF
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Reverse transcription PCR (RT-PCR) is the gold standard for rapidly confirming infection with SARS-CoV-2. However, the great demand for SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR testing has outpaced its supply in some scenarios, such as the large-scale testing of asymptomatic subjects for public health interventions. Notably, sample pooling, that is, combining multiple samples before and after nucleic acid extraction into a single test sample, has the potential to improve the available RT-PCR testing capacity.1 2 However, compromised sensitivity caused by the sample dilution effect can lead to higher rates of false-negative results in low-viral-load specimens, which carries a risk of missing asymptomatic carriers capable of transmitting the infection.3–5 Thus, developing a high-throughput testing strategy with no sensitivity loss for the early detection and active monitoring of individuals potentially exposed to SARS-CoV-2 is urgently required for prevention and control of the COVID-19 pandemic. Joung et al has demonstrated that increasing sample input via capturing all of the viral RNA from a nasopharyngeal swab (NPS) can boost the sensitivity of SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR.6 In this study, we compared the effectiveness and sensitivity of the traditional sample pooling (TSP) strategy and the sample pooling concentration (SPC) strategy for COVID-19 diagnosis using the automated nucleic acid extraction system based on magnetic nanoparticles.
NPS in chemically inactivated buffer (Liferiver, Shanghai, China) obtained from patients with confirmed COVID-19 and health professionals were used for pooling. For each pool, 300 µL of NPS from three samples and 200 µL of NPS from eight samples were pooled into a single tube and mixed thoroughly. Two pooling strategies were evaluated as follows: (1) TSP strategy: part of the pooled samples, that is, 300 µL of the three-TSP pool and 200 µL of the eight-TSP pool, was subjected to RNA extraction using …
Footnotes
Handling editor Tahir S Pillay.
Contributors XW: concept, design, analysis and manuscript writing; ZH: concept, design and testing; JS: concept, design, testing and analysis; RZ: design and testing YX: concept, design and analysis; and HW: concept, design, analysis, editing and supervision. All authors gave their final approval for this version of the article to be published.
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests None declared.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Supplemental material This content has been supplied by the author(s). It has not been vetted by BMJ Publishing Group Limited (BMJ) and may not have been peer-reviewed. Any opinions or recommendations discussed are solely those of the author(s) and are not endorsed by BMJ. BMJ disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on the content. Where the content includes any translated material, BMJ does not warrant the accuracy and reliability of the translations (including but not limited to local regulations, clinical guidelines, terminology, drug names and drug dosages), and is not responsible for any error and/or omissions arising from translation and adaptation or otherwise.