Evaluation of CRISPR-Based Assays for Rapid Detection of SARS-CoV-2: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Abstract

Purpose Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the pathogen of coronavirus disease 2019. Diagnostic methods based on the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) have been developed to detect SARS-CoV-2 rapidly. Therefore, a systematic review and meta-analysis were performed to assess the diagnostic accuracy of CRISPR for detecting SARS-CoV-2 infection. Materials and Methods Studies published before August 2021 were retrieved from four databases, using the keywords “SARS-CoV-2” and “CRISPR.” Data were collected from these publications, and the sensitivity, specificity, negative likelihood ratio (NLR), positive likelihood ratio (PLR), and diagnostic odds ratio (DOR) were calculated. The summary receiver operating characteristic curve was plotted for analysis with MetaDiSc 1.4. The Stata 15.0 software was used to draw Deeks’ funnel plots to evaluate publication bias. Results We performed a pooled analysis of 38 independent studies shown in 30 publications. The reference standard was reverse transcription-quantitative PCR. The results indicated that the sensitivity of CRISPR-based methods for diagnosis was 0.94 (95% CI 0.93–0.95), the specificity was 0.98 (95% CI 0.97–0.99), the PLR was 34.03 (95% CI 20.81–55.66), the NLR was 0.08 (95% CI 0.06–0.10), and the DOR was 575.74 (95% CI 382.36–866.95). The area under the curve was 0.9894. Conclusion Studies indicate that a diagnostic method based on CRISPR has high sensitivity and specificity. Therefore, this would be a potential diagnostic tool to improve the accuracy of SARS-CoV-2 detection.

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“…Rapid molecular diagnostic tests (RMDTs), which can be conducted at the laboratory or at the point of care (PoC), are a type of molecular assay that can yield results in as fast as 15-30 minutes [21]. Over the past two decades, numerous systematic literature reviews (SLRs) and meta-analyses (MAs) have sought to identify and describe evidence on the diagnostic performance of RMDTs for respiratory infections in terms of sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive values [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41]. However, fewer SLRs/MAs have summarized and synthesized evidence on the impact of these tests in terms of therapeutic decisions and patient outcomes.…”

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“…Rapid molecular diagnostic tests (RMDTs), which can be conducted at the laboratory or at the point of care (PoC), are a type of molecular assay that can yield results in as fast as 15-30 minutes [21]. Over the past two decades, numerous systematic literature reviews (SLRs) and meta-analyses (MAs) have sought to identify and describe evidence on the diagnostic performance of RMDTs for respiratory infections in terms of sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive values [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41]. However, fewer SLRs/MAs have summarized and synthesized evidence on the impact of these tests in terms of therapeutic decisions and patient outcomes.…”