Journal of clinical microbiology
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J. Clin. Microbiol. · Jul 2020
Review Comparative StudyComparative Pathogenesis of Bovine and Porcine Respiratory Coronaviruses in the Animal Host Species and SARS-CoV-2 in Humans.
Discovery of bats with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-related coronaviruses (CoVs) raised the specter of potential future outbreaks of zoonotic SARS-CoV-like disease in humans, which largely went unheeded. Nevertheless, the novel SARS-CoV-2 of bat ancestral origin emerged to infect humans in Wuhan, China, in late 2019 and then became a global pandemic. Less than 5 months after its emergence, millions of people worldwide have been infected asymptomatically or symptomatically and at least 360,000 have died. ⋯ BCoV also has a dual tropism for the respiratory and gastrointestinal tracts. These aspects, their interspecies transmission, and certain factors that impact disease severity in cattle parallel related facets of SARS-CoV or SARS-CoV-2 in humans. PRCV has a tissue tropism for the upper and lower respiratory tracts and a cellular tropism for type 1 and 2 pneumocytes in lung but is generally a mild infection unless complicated by other exacerbating factors, such as bacterial or viral coinfections and immunosuppression (corticosteroids).
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J. Clin. Microbiol. · Jul 2020
Comparative StudyComparison of Four Molecular In Vitro Diagnostic Assays for the Detection of SARS-CoV-2 in Nasopharyngeal Specimens.
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the novel human coronavirus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), was first discovered in December 2019 as the cause of an outbreak of pneumonia in the city of Wuhan, Hubei province, China. The clinical presentation of COVID-19 is fairly nonspecific, and symptoms overlap those of other seasonal respiratory infections concurrently circulating in the population. ⋯ In the present study, we evaluated the analytical sensitivity and clinical performance of the following four SARS-CoV-2 molecular diagnostic assays granted emergency use authorization by the FDA using nasopharyngeal swabs from symptomatic patients: the New York SARS-CoV-2 Real-time Reverse Transcriptase (RT)-PCR Diagnostic Panel (modified CDC) assay, the Simplexa COVID-19 Direct (Diasorin Molecular) assay, GenMark ePlex SARS-CoV-2 (GenMark) assay, and the Hologic Panther Fusion SARS-CoV-2 (Hologic) assay. This information is crucial for both laboratories and clinical teams as decisions on which testing platform to implement are made.
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J. Clin. Microbiol. · Jul 2020
Comparative StudyComparison of the Accula SARS-CoV-2 Test with a Laboratory-Developed Assay for Detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in Clinical Nasopharyngeal Specimens.
Several point-of-care (POC) molecular tests have received emergency use authorization (EUA) from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the diagnosis of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The test performance characteristics of the Accula (Mesa Biotech) SARS-CoV-2 POC test need to be evaluated to inform its optimal use. The aim of this study was to assess the test performance of the Accula SARS-CoV-2 test. ⋯ Compared to the SHC-LDT, the Accula SARS-CoV-2 test showed excellent negative agreement. However, positive agreement was low for samples with low viral load. The false-negative rate of the Accula POC test calls for a more thorough evaluation of POC test performance characteristics in clinical settings and for confirmatory testing in individuals with moderate to high pretest probability of SARS-CoV-2 who test negative on Accula.
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J. Clin. Microbiol. · Jul 2020
Clinical performance of the Luminex NxTAG CoV Extended Panel for SARS-CoV-2 detection in nasopharyngeal specimens of COVID-19 patients in Hong Kong.
In December 2019, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) was first reported in the Hubei province of China and later spread all over the world. There was an urgent need of a high-throughput molecular test for screening the COVID-19 patients in the community. The Luminex NxTAG CoV extended panel is a high-throughput FDA emergency use-authorized molecular diagnostic assay for SARS-CoV-2 detection. ⋯ Overall, the E gene target of the NxTAG panel demonstrated the highest sensitivity among the three SARS-CoV-2 targets, while the N gene targets demonstrated the least. In conclusion, the NxTAG CoV extended panel is simple to use, and it has high diagnostic sensitivity and specificity to SARS-CoV-2 in nasopharyngeal specimens. We recommend this diagnostic system for high-throughput COVID-19 screening in the community.