Current literature has focused on testing saliva in symptomatic patients, and little information is available regarding saliva performance in asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection. We compared paired saliva and nasopharyngeal swabs (NPS) collected from 33 symptomatic and 12 asymptomatic known SARS-CoV-2-positive patients. Saliva had an overall sensitivity of 59%, a specificity of 95%, and a negative predictive value of 98%. Saliva demonstrated higher sensitivity in symptomatic (80%) vs. asymptomatic individuals (36%) (P=0.006), and in high-risk (symptomatic, febrile and/or with comorbidities) (82%) vs. low-risk (asymptomatic, afebrile and no comorbidities) (22%) patients (P=0.0002). Cycle threshold (Ct) values in NPS specimens were higher in saliva-negative vs. saliva-positive cases (P= 0.02 and <0.001). Overall, these findings show that despite saliva's low sensitivity in asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections, it can detect infections with lower Ct values and a potentially higher chance of viral transmission. Additional studies are warranted to fully evaluate saliva as a screening test for COVID-19.

Abstract Objectives Management of colorectal cancer warrants mutational analysis of KRAS/NRAS when considering anti–epidermal growth factor receptor therapy and BRAF testing for prognostic stratification. In this multicenter study, we compared a fully integrated, cartridge-based system to standard-of-care assays used by participating laboratories. Methods Twenty laboratories enrolled 874 colorectal cancer cases between November 2017 and December 2018. Testing was performed on the Idylla automated system (Biocartis) using the KRAS and NRAS-BRAF cartridges (research use only) and results compared with in-house standard-of-care testing methods. Results There were sufficient data on 780 cases to measure turnaround time compared with standard assays. In-house polymerase chain reaction (PCR) had an average testing turnaround time of 5.6 days, send-out PCR of 22.5 days, in-house Sanger sequencing of 14.7 days, send-out Sanger of 17.8 days, in-house next-generation sequencing (NGS) of 12.5 days, and send-out NGS of 20.0 days. Standard testing had an average turnaround time of 11 days. Idylla average time to results was 4.9 days with a range of 0.4 to 13.5 days. Conclusions The described cartridge-based system offers rapid and reliable testing of clinically actionable mutation in colorectal cancer specimens directly from formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissue sections. Its simplicity and ease of use compared with other molecular techniques make it suitable for routine clinical laboratory testing.

Background: EUS-guided fine-needle aspiration (FNA) has long been the main method for sampling pancreatic lesions. Recently, the method of fine-needle biopsy (FNB) was introduced in practice, allowing for the acquisition of tissue cores while aspirating the lesion. We hereby report our experience with a new FNB needle compared with the standard FNA needle.Methods: Retrospective data from our department were collected on patients who underwent FNB using the Acquire EUS-FNB needle (Boston Scientific, Massachusetts) and FNA using the EchoTip Ultra EUS-FNA Needle (Cook Medical, Indiana) between January 2017 and February 2018. The cases were reviewed independently by two cytopathologists and evaluated for the presence of cell block or core tissue material, adequacy for potential ancillary testing, and number of passes.Results: The number of passes ranged from 1 to 16, with a mean of 5.52 ± 3.74 in the FNA group, and from 1 to 6, with a mean of 2.74 ± 1.11 passes in the FNB group (P < .0001). Tissue cores were present in 87.23% of the FNB needle samples. A cell block was adequate in 36.36% of cases using the FNA needle. The diagnostic yield as well as the adequacy for ancillary testing were significantly different between the two groups (P = .0001). The tumor size, location and patients' demographics were not statistically significant between the two groups.Conclusion: Compared with the conventional needle, the new FNB needle was associated with a lower number of passes and a better yield for histological material.

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Understandability is one of the major quality attributes used to measure the understandability of object oriented software and Android applications based on certain metrics. It is very important in most software development life cycles because misunderstanding any of the steps of the software development life cycle will lead to a poor-quality product. Mobile applications, like any software, need to be maintained and evolved over time, so understanding them is essential to their maintainability, reliability, quality and reusability. In this research, the authors discuss the importance of understandability in Android applications and determine the most influential metrics by using Metrics Reloaded tool to measure the metrics values. Then, based on these values, they develop a formula to measure the understandability for Android applications. The results show that the understandability of Android application can be measured by the formula developed based on object oriented and Android metrics.