Development and implementation of a simple and rapid extraction-free saliva SARS-CoV-2 RT-LAMP workflow for workplace surveillance
This article has been Reviewed by the following groups
Listed in
- Evaluated articles (ScreenIT)
Abstract
Effective management of the COVID-19 pandemic requires widespread and frequent testing of the population for SARS-CoV-2 infection. Saliva has emerged as an attractive alternative to nasopharyngeal samples for surveillance testing as it does not require specialized personnel or materials for its collection and can be easily provided by the patient. We have developed a simple, fast, and sensitive saliva-based testing workflow that requires minimal sample treatment and equipment. After sample inactivation, RNA is quickly released and stabilized in an optimized buffer, followed by reverse transcription loop-mediated isothermal amplification (RT-LAMP) and detection of positive samples using a colorimetric and/or fluorescent readout. The workflow was optimized using 1,670 negative samples collected from 172 different individuals over the course of 6 months. Each sample was spiked with 50 copies/μL of inactivated SARS-CoV-2 virus to monitor the efficiency of viral detection. Using pre-defined clinical samples, the test was determined to be 100% specific and 97% sensitive, with a limit of detection of 39 copies/mL. The method was successfully implemented in a CLIA laboratory setting for workplace surveillance and reporting. From April 2021-February 2022, more than 30,000 self-collected samples from 755 individuals were tested and 85 employees tested positive mainly during December and January, consistent with high infection rates in Massachusetts and nationwide.
Article activity feed
-
-
SciScore for 10.1101/2022.03.11.22272282: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics IRB: Ethical approval: Review and approval were obtained from the WCG/New England Institutional Review Board (
Consent: All relevant ethical guidelines and regulations were followed and study participants, or their legal guardians, provided written informed consent.Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Cell Line Authentication not detected. Table 2: Resources
Experimental Models: Cell Lines Sentences Resources Total human RNA from HeLa cells (ThermoFisher, Cat# AM7852) was used to validate reagents. HeLasuggested: NoneResults from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are …
SciScore for 10.1101/2022.03.11.22272282: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics IRB: Ethical approval: Review and approval were obtained from the WCG/New England Institutional Review Board (
Consent: All relevant ethical guidelines and regulations were followed and study participants, or their legal guardians, provided written informed consent.Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Cell Line Authentication not detected. Table 2: Resources
Experimental Models: Cell Lines Sentences Resources Total human RNA from HeLa cells (ThermoFisher, Cat# AM7852) was used to validate reagents. HeLasuggested: NoneResults from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.
-
