Journal article
Sensitivity and specificity of two WHO approved SARS-CoV2 antigen assays in detecting patients with SARS-CoV2 infection
- Abstract:
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Background: SARS-CoV-2 rapid antigen (Ag) detection kits are widely used in addition to quantitative reverse transcription PCR PCR (RT-qPCR), as they are cheaper with a rapid turnaround time. As there are many concerns regarding their sensitivity and specificity, in different settings, we evaluated two WHO approved rapid Ag kits in a large cohort of Sri Lankan individuals.
Methods: Paired nasopharangeal swabs were obtained from 4786 participants for validation of the SD-Biosensor rapid Ag assay and 3325 for the Abbott rapid Ag assay, in comparison to RT-qPCR. A short questionnaire was used to record symptoms at the time of testing, and blood samples were obtained from 2721 of them for detection of SARS-CoV-2 specific antibodies.
Results: The overall sensitivity of the SD-Biosensor Ag kit was 36.5% and the Abbott Ag test was 50.76%. The Abbott Ag test showed specificity of 99.4% and the SD-Biosensor Ag test 97.5%. At Ct values < 25, the sensitivity was 71.3% to 76.6% for the SD-Biosensor Ag test and 77.3% to 88.9% for the Abbott Ag test. The Ct values for all genes (RdRP, S, E and N) tested with all RT-qPCR kits were significantly lower for the positive results of the Abbott Ag test compared to the SD-Biosensor test. 209 (48.04%) individuals who had antibodies gave a positive RT-qPCR result, and antibody positivity rates were higher at Ct values > 30 (46.1 to 82.9%). 32.1% of those who gave a positive result with the SD-Biosensor Ag test and 26.3% of those who gave positive results with the Abbott Ag test had SARS-CoV-2 antibodies at the time of detection.
Conclusions: Both rapid Ag tests appeared to be highly sensitive in detecting individuals at lower Ct values, in a community setting in Sri Lanka, but it will be important to further establish the relationship to infectivity.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 1.8MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1186/s12879-022-07240-6
Authors
- Publisher:
- BioMed Central
- Journal:
- BMC Infectious Diseases More from this journal
- Volume:
- 22
- Issue:
- 1
- Article number:
- 276
- Place of publication:
- England
- Publication date:
- 2022-03-22
- Acceptance date:
- 2022-03-03
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1471-2334
- Pmid:
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35317731
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1250821
- Local pid:
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pubs:1250821
- Deposit date:
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2023-07-18
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Jeewandara et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2022
- Rights statement:
- © The Author(s) 2022. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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