PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Jacques Boutros
AU  - Jonathan Benzaquen
AU  - Charles Hugo Marquette
AU  - Marius Ilié
AU  - Mickelina Labaky
AU  - Didier Benchetrit
AU  - Thibaut Lavrut
AU  - Sylvie Leroy
AU  - Richard Chemla
AU  - Michel Carles
AU  - Virginie Tanga
AU  - Charlotte Maniel
AU  - Olivier Bordone
AU  - Maryline Allégra
AU  - Virginie Lespinet
AU  - Julien Fayada
AU  - Jennifer Griffonnet
AU  - Véronique Hofman
AU  - Paul Hofman
TI  - Salivary detection of COVID-19: clinical performance of oral sponge sampling for SARS-CoV-2 testing
AID  - 10.1183/23120541.00396-2021
DP  - 2021 Oct 01
TA  - ERJ Open Research
PG  - 00396-2021
VI  - 7
IP  - 4
4099  - http://openres.ersjournals.com/content/7/4/00396-2021.short
4100  - http://openres.ersjournals.com/content/7/4/00396-2021.full
SO  - erjor2021 Oct 01; 7
AB  - Background The current diagnostic standard for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) testing with nasopharyngeal (NP) swabs. The invasiveness and need for trained personnel make the NP technique unsuited for repeated community-based mass screening. We developed a technique to collect saliva in a simple and easy way with the sponges that are usually used for tamponade of epistaxis. This study was carried out to validate the clinical performance of oral sponge (OS) sampling for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) testing.Methods Over a period of 22 weeks, we collected prospectively 409 paired NP and OS samples from consecutive subjects presenting to a public community-based free screening centre. Subjects were referred by their attending physician because of recent COVID-19 symptoms (n = 147) or by the contact tracing staff of the French public health insurance because they were considered as close contacts of a laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 case (n = 262).Results In symptomatic subjects, RT-PCR SARS-CoV-2 testing with OS showed a 96.5% (95% CI: 89.6–94.8) concordance with NP testing, and a 93.2% (95% CI: 89.1–97.3) sensitivity when using the IdyllaTM platform and a sensitivity of 76.3% (95% CI: 69.4–83.2) on the Synlab Barla laboratory platform. In close contacts the NP-OS concordance (93.8%, 95% CI: 90.9–96.7) and OS sensitivity (71.9%, 95% CI: 66.5–77.3) were slightly lower.Conclusion These results strongly suggest that OS testing is a straightforward, low-cost and high-throughput sampling method that can be used for frequent RT-PCR testing of COVID-19 patients and mass screening of populations.Oral sampling for #SARSCoV2 RT-PCR is an easy-to-perform, straightforward self-administered sampling technique that has a sensitivity of up to 93.2% in symptomatic patients and 71% in close contact subjects https://bit.ly/3AKRj2U