Abstract
Current literature has focused on testing saliva in symptomatic patients, and little information is available regarding saliva performance in asymptomatic severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection. We compared paired saliva and nasopharyngeal swabs (NPS) collected from 33 symptomatic and 12 asymptomatic known SARS-CoV-2-positive patients. Saliva had an overall sensitivity of 59%, a specificity of 95%, and a negative predictive value of 98%. Saliva demonstrated higher sensitivity in symptomatic (80%) vs. asymptomatic individuals (36%) (P = 0.006), and in high-risk (symptomatic, febrile and/or with comorbidities) (82%) vs. low-risk (asymptomatic, afebrile, and no comorbidities) (22%) patients (P = 0.0002). Cycle threshold (Ct) values in NPS specimens were higher in saliva-negative vs. saliva-positive cases (P = 0.02 and <0.001). Overall, these findings show that despite saliva’s low sensitivity in asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections, it can detect infections with lower Ct values and a potentially higher chance of viral transmission. Additional studies are warranted to fully evaluate saliva as a screening test for coronavirus disease-2019.
Keywords: Asymptomatic; COVID-19; Nasopharyngeal swab; SARS-CoV-2; Saliva; Screening.
【저자키워드】 COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, Saliva, Screening, Nasopharyngeal swab, Asymptomatic, 【초록키워드】 coronavirus disease, Saliva, coronavirus, Infection, Comorbidities, Screening, Predictive value, Nasopharyngeal swab, sensitivity, specificity, Symptomatic patients, Asymptomatic individuals, Asymptomatic, cycle threshold, nasopharyngeal swabs, nasopharyngeal, symptomatic, Patient, Viral transmission, threshold, information, SARS-CoV-2 infections, screening test, Negative predictive value, Ct values, cycle, specimen, SARS-CoV-2-positive patients, febrile, NPs, afebrile, asymptomatic individual, current, detect, collected, evaluate, demonstrated, 【제목키워드】 reliability, diagnostic, utility, insight, symptomatic and asymptomatic,