Evaluation of a pneumonia multiplex PCR panel for detection of bacterial respiratory tract pathogens from serial specimens collected from hospitalized COVID-19 patients

We investigated the concordance between the Unyvero Hospitalized Pneumonia (HPN) application and quantitative culture for detection of bacterial pathogens from serial lower respiratory tract (LRT) specimens collected from the same subject. Comparison of results from HPN application and culture was evaluated using 69 LRT samples from 27 subjects, using two evaluation approaches. False positive detections by the HPN application was 29% (20/69) in Evaluation I vs 10% (7/68) in Evaluation II. Additional pathogens detected by the HPN application could be confirmed in many instances by culture positivity for the same organism from previous or subsequent samples from the same subject.

Automated summary

This study investigated the concordance between the Unyvero Hospitalized Pneumonia application and quantitative culture in detecting bacterial pathogens from consecutive lower respiratory tract specimens. The false positive rate of the HPN application was 29% and 10% in the two evaluation approaches, respectively. Additional pathogens detected by the HPN application were confirmed by culture positivity in previous or subsequent samples.