Papers

Peer-reviewed International journal
Aug, 2021

Does the SARS-CoV-2 rapid antigen test result correlate with the viral culture result?

Journal of infection and chemotherapy : official journal of the Japan Society of Chemotherapy
  • Kei Yamamoto
  • Mami Nagashima
  • Isao Yoshida
  • Kenji Sadamasu
  • Masami Kurokawa
  • Maki Nagashima
  • Noriko Kinoshita
  • Kenji Maeda
  • Jin Takasaki
  • Katsuji Teruya
  • Norio Ohmagari
  • Display all

Volume
27
Number
8
First page
1273
Last page
1275
Language
English
Publishing type
Research paper (scientific journal)
DOI
10.1016/j.jiac.2021.05.006
Publisher
Elsevier BV

Rapid antigen tests (RATs) for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) have advantages over viral culture in terms of cost and rapidity of testing, but they have low sensitivity. In addition, RATs tend to be negative from approximately 11 days after symptom onset. To determine whether the antigen-negative state indicates a lack of infectiousness, we assessed the association between viral culture and RAT results. Viral culture, reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR), and rapid antigen testing were performed on stored nasopharyngeal samples with threshold cycle values < 30, based on previous RT-qPCR testing. SARS-CoV-2 was isolated by viral culture from nine samples (45%) and one sample (17%) with positive and negative RAT results, respectively. The RAT and viral culture results were both associated with the viral load level and their cutoffs were similar, but the associations were not statistically significant. RAT might be a useful indicator of infectiousness, which can be helpful to control infection. However, further studies with larger sample size are warranted to confirm this observation.

Link information
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jiac.2021.05.006
PubMed
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34023222
PubMed Central
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8114766
ID information
  • DOI : 10.1016/j.jiac.2021.05.006
  • ISSN : 1341-321X
  • Pubmed ID : 34023222
  • Pubmed Central ID : PMC8114766

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