March 3, 2021

Comparative Performance of SARS-CoV-2 Lateral Flow Antigen Tests Demonstrates Their Utility for High Sensitivity Detection of Infectious Virus in Clinical Specimens

Category: Article Summary

Topic: Testing and Treatment

Keywords (Tags): testing

• [Pre-print, not peer-reviewed] A comparison of six commercial rapid antigen lateral flow devices (LFDs) using combined nasal/oropharyngeal swabs obtained from clinical specimens demonstrated sensitivities ranging from 65% to 89%. Sensitivity increased in most tests to over 90% for samples with cycle threshold (Cts) lower than 25 (higher viral concentrations) and most had a high specificity (>98%). Sensitivity increased to over 95% when compared with the detection of infectious virus alone (defined as recovery of virus from cell culture), irrespective of Ct. Test performance did not change in swabs with the B.1.1.7 variant.

Pickering et al. (Mar 2, 2021). Comparative Performance of SARS-CoV-2 Lateral Flow Antigen Tests Demonstrates Their Utility for High Sensitivity Detection of Infectious Virus in Clinical Specimens. Pre-print downloaded Mar 3 from https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.02.27.21252427