Background: The spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which appeared in late 2019, has been limited by isolating infected individuals. However, identifying such individuals requires accurate diagnostic tools.
Objective: This study evaluates the capacity of the Aptima™ Transcription-Mediated Amplification (TMA) assay (Hologic® Panther System) to detect the virus in clinical samples.
Study design: We compared the Aptima™ assay to two in-house real-time RT-PCR techniques, one running on the Panther Fusion™ module and the other on the MagNA Pure 96 and Light-Cycler 480 instruments. We included a total of 200 respiratory specimens: 100 tested prospectively and 100 retrospectively (25 -ve/75 +ve).
Results: The final Cohen's kappa coefficients were: κ = 0.978 between the Aptima™ and Panther Fusion™ assays, κ = 0.945 between the Aptima™ and MagNA/LC480 assays and κ = 0.956 between the MagNA/LC480 and Panther Fusion™ assays.
Conclusion: These findings indicate that the Aptima™ SARS-CoV-2 TMA assay data agree well with those obtained with our routine methods and that this assay can be used to diagnose coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
Keywords: COVID-19; Coronavirus; Hologic® Panther System; SARS-CoV-2.
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