Head-to-head comparison of the diagnostic accuracies of BD Veritor™ System RSV and Quidel® Sofia® RSV FIA systems for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) diagnosis

Abstract

Background: Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is one of the most common causes of severe lower respiratory tract disease among infants and young children. BD Veritor™ System RSV (BD) and Quidel(®) Sofia(®) RSV FIA (QD) are the new generation lateral flow digital immunoassay (DIA) tests with an instrumented read for the qualitative detection of RSV viral antigens.

Objective: To compare the diagnostic accuracies of BD and QD for RSV detection using fresh nasopharyngeal aspirates and nasopharyngeal swab specimens collected in universal transport media during 2013-2014 respiratory season.

Study design: The two DIA tests were performed simultaneously on randomly selected specimens on a weekly basis during the RSV season until 200 fresh remnant specimens were enrolled. Real-time RT-PCR assay results were used to compare and evaluate the performance of both RSV DIA assays.

Results: Among 200 specimens tested, RSV real-time RT-PCR assay detected RSV in 104 samples, while QD detected 84 samples and BD detected 74 samples as positive. The overall sensitivity for detection of RSV in comparison to PCR was 71.15% (61.3-79.4) for BD and 80.77% (71.6-87.6) for QD system (P=0.36). The specificity was 100% (95.2-100) for both systems. The work flow analysis revealed that the overall specimen processing time was significantly lower for BD as compared with the QD assay.

Conclusions: In comparison with the real-time PCR, the QD system showed a higher sensitivity than that of the BD system, but the difference did not reach statistical significance (P=0.36). Both BD and QD systems were found comparable in terms of specificity.

Keywords: BD Veritor™ System RSV; Quidel(®) Sofia(®) RSV FIA system; RT real time PCR; Rapid antigen testing; Respiratory syncytial virus; Sensitivity; Specificity.