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Reducing COVID-19 diagnostic errors with dNTPαSe supplementation.

Jun ZhangLing TangDan LiuShun ZhangXiaoling DingGuolong GaoXiaodong DengZhengying LiuXi TianWei HeBei HuZhen Huang
Published in: The Analyst (2023)
Timely and accurate diagnosis of COVID-19 is critical for controlling the pandemic. As the standard method to diagnose SARS-CoV-2, the real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) has good convenience. However, RT-qPCR still has a relatively high false-negative rate, particularly in the case of detecting low viral loads. In this study, using selenium-modified nucleoside triphosphates (dNTPαSe) in the RT-PCR reactions, we successfully increased the detection sensitivity and reduced the false-negative rate in COVID-19 diagnosis. By detecting positive controls, pseudovirus, and clinical samples with the commercial kits, we found that the dNTPαSe supplementation to these kits could generally offer smaller Ct values, permit the viral detection even in single-digit copies, and increase the detection specificity, sensitivity, and accuracy, thereby reducing the false-negative rate. Our experimental results demonstrated that dNTPαSe supplementation can make the commercial kits more specific, sensitive, and accurate, and this method is a convenient and efficient strategy for the disease detection and diagnosis.
Keyphrases
  • sars cov
  • coronavirus disease
  • respiratory syndrome coronavirus
  • real time pcr
  • loop mediated isothermal amplification
  • magnetic resonance imaging
  • patient safety
  • mass spectrometry
  • quantum dots
  • dual energy