ScholarWorks@중앙대학교

초록

Rapid point-of-care (POC) diagnosis of respiratory viruses has conventionally been carried out using nasopharyngeal swabs, a procedure associated with significant patient discomfort. Although a less invasive alternative using nasal swabs is commonly employed, its diagnostic sensitivity is markedly lower. Although saliva-based sampling methods have recently been investigated, their diagnostic accuracy is limited because of the low titer of the target virus in a relatively large sample volume. The purpose of this study was to develop a simple gargle sample concentration method for the oral POC diagnosis of respiratory viruses via both molecular and immunodiagnostic assays. We demonstrated that proteins within the gargle sample can act as carriers that facilitate virus-protein interactions, which results in aggregation. The degree of virus-protein aggregation was modulated by adjusting the concentration of detergent Brij 35, after which the aggregates were concentrated using a filter with an average pore size of 450 nm. An optimized elution buffer was employed to disrupt the aggregates, thereby enabling the elution of both viral antigens and nucleic acids from the virus-protein aggregates. Molecular diagnosis comparison using the nasal swab and gargle methods was conducted in 17 patients with displaying light symptoms. The results indicate a markedly higher positive detection rate (88%) using the gargle method compared to the nasal swab method (6%).

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