Journal
FRONTIERS IN MICROBIOLOGY
Volume 14, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
FRONTIERS MEDIA SA
DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2023.1163438
Keywords
SARS-CoV-2; children; infection; pediatric; COVID-19; sample collection; nasopharyngeal swab; salivary swab
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This study compared nasopharyngeal (NP) swabs and saliva samples collected from pediatric patients to evaluate whether saliva collection can be a valuable alternative to the traditional NP swab sampling in children. The results showed consistent results between saliva samples and NP swabs, suggesting that saliva samples can be a valuable alternative for the direct diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 in pediatric patients.
SARS-CoV-2 infection is mainly detected by multiplex real-time RT-PCR from upper respiratory specimens, which is considered the gold-standard technique for SARS-CoV-2 infection diagnosis. A nasopharyngeal (NP) swab represents the clinical sample of choice, but NP swabbing can be uncomfortable to the patients, especially for pediatric-age participants, requires trained healthcare personnel, and may generate an aerosol, increasing the intrinsic exposure risk of healthcare workers. The objective of this study was to compare paired NP and saliva samples (SS) collected from pediatric patients to evaluate whether the saliva collection procedure may be considered a valuable alternative to the classical NP swab (NPS) sampling in children. In this study, we describe a SARS-CoV-2 multiplex real-time RT-PCR protocol for SS, comparing the results with the paired NPS specimens from 256 pediatric patients (mean age 4.24 +/- 4.40 years) admitted to the hospital emergency room of Azienda Ospedaliera Universitaria Integrata (AOUI), Verona, and randomly enrolled between September 2020 and December 2020. The saliva sampling demonstrated consistent results when compared to NPS use. The SARS-CoV-2 genome was detected in 16 out of 256 (6.25%) NP samples, among which 13 (5.07%) were positive even when paired SS were analyzed. Moreover, SARS-CoV-2-negative NPS and SS were consistent, and the overall concordances between NPS and SS were detected in 253 out of 256 samples (98.83%). Our results suggest that saliva samples may be considered a valuable alternative to NPS for SARS-CoV-2 direct diagnosis with multiplex real-time RT-PCR in pediatric patients.
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