Sensitivity of rapid antigen tests against SARS-CoV-2 Omicron and Delta variants.
J Clin Microbiol
; 61(10): e0013823, 2023 10 24.
Article
en En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-37728336
ABSTRACT
Rapid antigen tests (RATs) have become an invaluable tool for combating the COVID-19 pandemic. However, concerns have been raised regarding the ability of existing RATs to effectively detect emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants. We compared the performance of 10 commercially available, emergency use authorized RATs against the Delta and Omicron SARS-CoV-2 variants using both individual patient and serially diluted pooled clinical samples. The RATs exhibited lower sensitivity for Omicron samples when using PCR cycle threshold (CT) value (a rough proxy for RNA concentration) as the comparator. Interestingly, however, they exhibited similar sensitivity for Omicron and Delta samples when using quantitative antigen concentration as the comparator. We further found that the Omicron samples had lower ratios of antigen to RNA, which offers a potential explanation for the apparent lower sensitivity of RATs for that variant when using C T value as a reference. Our findings underscore the complexity in assessing RAT performance against emerging variants and highlight the need for ongoing evaluation in the face of changing population immunity and virus evolution.
Palabras clave
Texto completo:
1
Banco de datos:
MEDLINE
Asunto principal:
SARS-CoV-2
/
COVID-19
Tipo de estudio:
Diagnostic_studies
Límite:
Humans
Idioma:
En
Revista:
J Clin Microbiol
Año:
2023
Tipo del documento:
Article
País de afiliación:
Estados Unidos