November 13, 2020

Performance of Nucleic Acid Amplification Tests for Detection of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 in Prospectively Pooled Specimens

Category: Article Summary

Topic: Testing and Treatment

Keywords (Tags): testing

• A study evaluating the test performance characteristics of 3 nucleic acid amplification tests for SARS-CoV-2 found that the positive percent agreement (PPA) of pooled versus individual testing ranged from 71.7% to 82.6% for pools of 8 and from 82.9% to 100.0% for pools of 4. Pooled samples showed decreased PPA relative to individual samples. False negatives occurred only in pools with a low estimated viral load. The study team also developed a model to estimate effects of dilution on PPA and efficiency of the testing algorithm and determined that PPA depended on the proportion of tests with positive results, cycle threshold distribution, and assay analytical sensitivity.

Wang et al. (Nov 12, 2021). Performance of Nucleic Acid Amplification Tests for Detection of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 in Prospectively Pooled Specimens. Emerging Infectious Disease Journal. https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/27/1/20-3379_article