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Saliva as an alternative specimen to nasopharyngeal swabs for COVID-19 diagnosis: Review

Almost 2 years ago, the novel coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was discovered to be the causative agent of the disease COVID-19. Subsequently, SARS-CoV-2 has spread across the world infecting millions of people, resulting in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The...

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Autores principales: McPhillips, Leah, MacSharry, John
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Microbiology Society 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9394527/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36003360
http://dx.doi.org/10.1099/acmi.0.000366
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author McPhillips, Leah
MacSharry, John
author_facet McPhillips, Leah
MacSharry, John
author_sort McPhillips, Leah
collection PubMed
description Almost 2 years ago, the novel coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was discovered to be the causative agent of the disease COVID-19. Subsequently, SARS-CoV-2 has spread across the world infecting millions of people, resulting in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The current ‘gold standard’ for COVID-19 diagnosis involves obtaining a nasopharyngeal swab (NPS) from the patient and testing for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in the specimen using real-time reverse transcription PCR (RT-qPCR). However, obtaining a NPS specimen is an uncomfortable and invasive procedure for the patient and is limited in its applicability to mass testing. Interest in saliva as an alternative diagnostic specimen is of increasing global research interest due to its malleability to mass testing, greater patient acceptability and overall ease of specimen collection. However, the current literature surrounding the sensitivity of saliva compared to NPS is conflicting. The aim of this review was to analyse the recent literature to assess the viability of saliva in COVID-19 diagnosis. We hypothesize that the discrepancies in the current literature are likely due to the variations in the saliva collection and processing protocols used between studies. The universal adaptation of an optimised protocol could alleviate these discrepancies and see saliva specimens be as sensitive, if not more, than NPS for COVID-19 diagnosis. Whilst saliva specimens are more complimentary to mass-testing, with the possibility of samples being collected from home, the RT-qPCR diagnostic process remains to be the rate-limiting step and therefore interest in salivary rapid antigen tests, which negate the wait-times of RT-qPCR with results available within 15–30 min, may be an answer to this.
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spelling pubmed-93945272022-08-23 Saliva as an alternative specimen to nasopharyngeal swabs for COVID-19 diagnosis: Review McPhillips, Leah MacSharry, John Access Microbiol Reviews Almost 2 years ago, the novel coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was discovered to be the causative agent of the disease COVID-19. Subsequently, SARS-CoV-2 has spread across the world infecting millions of people, resulting in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The current ‘gold standard’ for COVID-19 diagnosis involves obtaining a nasopharyngeal swab (NPS) from the patient and testing for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in the specimen using real-time reverse transcription PCR (RT-qPCR). However, obtaining a NPS specimen is an uncomfortable and invasive procedure for the patient and is limited in its applicability to mass testing. Interest in saliva as an alternative diagnostic specimen is of increasing global research interest due to its malleability to mass testing, greater patient acceptability and overall ease of specimen collection. However, the current literature surrounding the sensitivity of saliva compared to NPS is conflicting. The aim of this review was to analyse the recent literature to assess the viability of saliva in COVID-19 diagnosis. We hypothesize that the discrepancies in the current literature are likely due to the variations in the saliva collection and processing protocols used between studies. The universal adaptation of an optimised protocol could alleviate these discrepancies and see saliva specimens be as sensitive, if not more, than NPS for COVID-19 diagnosis. Whilst saliva specimens are more complimentary to mass-testing, with the possibility of samples being collected from home, the RT-qPCR diagnostic process remains to be the rate-limiting step and therefore interest in salivary rapid antigen tests, which negate the wait-times of RT-qPCR with results available within 15–30 min, may be an answer to this. Microbiology Society 2022-05-20 /pmc/articles/PMC9394527/ /pubmed/36003360 http://dx.doi.org/10.1099/acmi.0.000366 Text en © 2022 The Authors https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. This article was made open access via a Publish and Read agreement between the Microbiology Society and the corresponding author’s institution.
spellingShingle Reviews
McPhillips, Leah
MacSharry, John
Saliva as an alternative specimen to nasopharyngeal swabs for COVID-19 diagnosis: Review
title Saliva as an alternative specimen to nasopharyngeal swabs for COVID-19 diagnosis: Review
title_full Saliva as an alternative specimen to nasopharyngeal swabs for COVID-19 diagnosis: Review
title_fullStr Saliva as an alternative specimen to nasopharyngeal swabs for COVID-19 diagnosis: Review
title_full_unstemmed Saliva as an alternative specimen to nasopharyngeal swabs for COVID-19 diagnosis: Review
title_short Saliva as an alternative specimen to nasopharyngeal swabs for COVID-19 diagnosis: Review
title_sort saliva as an alternative specimen to nasopharyngeal swabs for covid-19 diagnosis: review
topic Reviews
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9394527/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36003360
http://dx.doi.org/10.1099/acmi.0.000366
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