Saturday, January 02, 2021

SalivaDirect: A Cheaper Technique for COVID-19 Testing

Widespread and rapid testing to detect coronavirus infections is key during the ongoing pandemic. Catching an infection early could help contain the spread of the virus and thus help save lives. Countries around the world have been frustrated over testing shortages and delays for months now. But a new saliva-based test for COVID-19 could offer a fast and inexpensive solution to millions of people.

This laboratory diagnostic test has been developed by researchers at the Yale School of Public Health and has been granted authorization from the Food and Drug Administration recently. 
 
In a recent paper, published on August 4 on the preprint server medRxiv, a team led by Yale postdoc Chantal Vogels explained the new tool called 'SalivaDirect'. Another team, comprising of many of the same researchers, had earlier this year detailed that saliva could be collected in any sterile container and that it remained mostly stable, without the need for special tubes or preservatives. 
 
“This is a huge step forward to make testing more accessible,” said Chantal Vogels, a Yale postdoctoral fellow, who led the laboratory development and validation along with Doug Brackney, an adjunct assistant clinical professor. “This started off as an idea in our lab soon after we found saliva to be a promising sample type of the detection of SARS-CoV-2, and now it has the potential to be used on a large scale to help protect public health. We are delighted to make this contribution to the fight against coronavirus.”

How useful is SalivaDirect? 
Until now, detecting the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 involved the reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction test. This “RT-PCR” test is conducted by collecting a sample from the back of a person's nose or mouth. While effective, the nasopharyngeal swabbing is unpleasant and isn’t cheap either. However, it was chosen as the preferred sampling technique because of its effectiveness in detecting respiratory infections over the years. 
 
Unfortunately, there’s a limit to the amount of COVID-19 testing that can be conducted through this method. This is where the new saliva-based test could be a game-changer as it promises to be quicker, cheaper, more flexible, and widely accessible. With saliva being quick and easy to collect, this test could indeed be a turning point in COVID-19 diagnostics.
 
So far, the results have shown that SalivaDirect is highly sensitive and produces similar results as nasopharyngeal swabbing. Now, further tests are being conducted to see if the method can be successful as a test for asymptomatic individuals, too. Also, compared to nasopharyngeal swabs, the authors found a “high agreement” of more than 94 percent in detecting true positives between the two methods.

This is only for your information, kindly take the advice of your doctor for medicines, exercises and so on.     

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