Evaluation of the specificity and sensitivity of a potential rapid influenza screening system

Abstract

Influenza remains a serious worldwide health threat with numerous deaths attributed to influenza-related complications. It is likely that transmission of influenza and both the morbidity and mortality of influenza could be reduced if inexpensive but reliable influenza screening assays were more available to the general public or local medical treatment facilities. This report provides the initial evaluation of a pilot system designed by Lucigen Corp. (Middleton, WI, USA) as a potential rapid near point-of-care screening system for influenza A and influenza B. The evaluation of specificity and sensitivity was conducted on stored nasal swab samples collected from emergency department patients presenting with influenza-like symptoms at a large military academic hospital and on de-identified nasal swabs and isolated RNA from a local epidemiology laboratory. The gold standard for assessment of specificity and sensitivity was the Luminex® Respiratory Viral Panel.

Lateral Gene Transfer of Family A DNA Polymerases between Thermophilic Viruses, Aquificae, and Apicomplexa

“…Bacterial PolAs usually comprise two domains, a functionally indivisible 3 0 -5 0 proofreading exonuclease and DNA polymerase (3 0 exo/pol) domain and a separate 5 0 -3 0 exonuclease (5 0 exo) domain, which functions in removal of RNA primers during lagging-strand synthesis and nick translation during DNA repair (Klenow and Overgaard-Hansen 1970;Setlow and Kornberg 1972;Beese and Steitz 1991). From a practical perspective, DNA polymerases, particularly thermostable DNA polymerases, are key elements in all major DNA and RNA amplification and sequencing methods, and polymerases described in this study have proven useful as molecular biology reagents (Schoenfeld et al 2010;Moser et al 2012;Perez et al 2013).…”

Problems and Methods of Diagnosis of Respiratory Viral Infections of Birds

“…RT-PCR, or reverse transcription, is based on the use of virus-specific oligonucleotide primers or random hexamers. It is considered a rather effective way to diagnose viruses [28].…”