Sensitive detection and quantification of SARS-CoV-2 in saliva

• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-91835-7
• Publication Date: 2021-06-14T10:03:10Z
• Authors: Mustafa Fatih Aba...; Blake Flood; Jing Lin; Sefika Ozcan; Sherin J. Rouhani; Athalia Pyzer; Jonathan Trujillo; Chaojie Zhen; Ping Wu; Stephen Jumic; Andrew Wang; Thomas F. Gajewski; Peng Wang; Madeline Hartley; Bekim Ameti; Rachael Niemiec; Marian Fernando; Vasudha Mishra; Peter Savage; Bulent Aydogan; Cindy Bethel; Scott Matushek; Kathleen G. Beavis; Nishant Agrawal; Jeremy Segal; Savaş Tay; Evgeny Izumchenko
• Keywords: Gold standard (test)

Abstract Saliva has significant advantages as a test medium for detection of SARS-CoV-2 infection in patients, such ease collection, minimal requirement supplies and trained personnel, safety. Comprehensive validation large cohort prospectively collected specimens with unknown status should be performed to evaluate the potential limitations saliva-based testing. We developed testing pipeline nucleic acids using real-time reverse transcription PCR (RT-PCR) droplet digital (ddPCR) readouts, measured samples from 137 outpatients tested at curbside facility 29 inpatients hospitalized COVID-19. These measurements were compared nasal swab results each patient by certified microbiology laboratory. found that our saliva positively detects 100% 93.75% patients identified positive Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) assay. Quantification viral loads ddPCR revealed an extremely wide range, 1 million-fold difference between individual patients. Our demonstrate both community screening hospital settings reliability is on par swabs detecting infected cases, higher sensitivity when combined low-abundance evade traditional methods.