Should RT-PCR be considered a gold standard in the diagnosis of Covid-19?
RT-PCR

Emergency situations related to biological agents can occur due to a natural disaster, a local outbreak (epidemic) or a global outbreak (pandemic) of an infectious agent. Rapid and reliable identification of biological agents is critical not only to confirm that a biological event has occurred, but also to initiate appropriate organizational and medical countermeasures.

Milad Daro Company has designed a portable detection platform for rapid and sensitive on-site identification of biological agents, the product developed for use by non-scientific personnel, RT-PCR is easily operated, even when protective equipment is used in extreme working conditions. he does. It is easily portable. Equally RT-PCR can be used with different mobile platform solutions. The operational principle of RT-PCR detection is based on the well-established ELISA method with electrochemical readout.

First time in 2020 To face the new coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, the need for early and accurate diagnosis of the disease among suspected cases quickly became obvious for effective management, and for better control of the spread of the disease in the population. Since the beginning of this disease epidemic caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) has routinely been used to confirm the diagnosis. The article describes the metrological performances of serology, and compare it with RT-PCR as the gold standard. Using a test as the gold standard when its metrological properties are clearly perfectible raises questions from a methodological point of view. Indeed, when an existing test is considered as a reference, this suggests that the test in question is always correct and that all misclassifications (false negatives and false positives) are due to the new test. However, the new test (in this case, serology) might be better than the old test (in this case, RT-PCR), but it would be impossible to demonstrate this. Consequently, the new test will never be able to achieve a sensitivity of 100%, since it is considered responsible for all misclassifications. The same mistake has also been made by other authors regarding the use of chest computed tomography scans as a diagnostic method.

Source:2023/November/07

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