Validating saliva as a biological sample for cost-effective, rapid and routine screening for SARS-CoV-2.

ABSTRACT:

Purpose

Compared to nasopharyngeal/oropharyngeal swabs (N/OPS-VTM), non-invasive saliva samples have enormous potential for scalability and routine population screening of SARS-CoV-2. In this study, we investigate the efficacy of saliva samples relative to N/OPS-VTM for use as a direct source for RT-PCR based SARS-CoV-2 detection.

Methods

We collected paired nasopharyngeal/oropharyngeal swabs and saliva samples from suspected positive SARS-CoV-2 patients and tested using RT-PCR. We used generalized linear models to investigate factors that explain result agreement. Further, we used simulations to evaluate the effectiveness of saliva-based screening in restricting the spread of infection in a large campus such as an educational institution.

Results

We observed a 75.4%

SUBMITTER: Ansil BR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10231307 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Sep-Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature