Methods of Respiratory Virus Detection: Advances towards Point-of-Care for Early Intervention

Abstract

Respiratory viral infections threaten human life and inflict an enormous healthcare burden worldwide. Frequent monitoring of viral antibodies and viral load can effectively help to control the spread of the virus and make timely interventions. However, current methods for detecting viral load require dedicated personnel and are time-consuming. Additionally, COVID-19 detection is generally relied on an automated PCR analyzer, which is highly instrument-dependent and expensive. As such, emerging technologies in the development of respiratory viral load assays for point-of-care (POC) testing are urgently needed for viral screening. Recent advances in loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP), biosensors, nanotechnology-based paper strips and microfluidics offer new strategies to develop a rapid, low-cost, and user-friendly respiratory viral monitoring platform. In this review, we summarized the traditional methods in respiratory virus detection and present the state-of-art technologies in the monitoring of respiratory virus at POC.

An all-in-one point-of-care testing device for multiplexed detection of respiratory infections

“…In this line, POCT devices with analytical performance comparable to or beyond that of laboratory testing technologies are needed to ensure the requirements of in vitro diagnostics, paving the way for novel home health-monitoring systems. Despite numerous efforts to develop sensitive and selective assays, POCT devices for the multiplex detection of respiratory infections have not yet been established ( Lu et al, 2021 ).…”

Application of mNGS in the Etiological Analysis of Lower Respiratory Tract Infections and the Prediction of Drug Resistance

“…The traditional methods for detecting respiratory viruses are based on virus-infected cell cultures, immunology-related reactions between antigens and antibodies, or PCR analyses ( 16 ). Virus isolation and culture is considered the gold standard for the identification of respiratory viruses ( 17 ), while its 4-week time requirement is too long to be used in clinical laboratories.…”

Advances in the Rapid Diagnostic of Viral Respiratory Tract Infections

“…The quantitative and qualitative analysis reflects the functionality of the host immune system and indicates viral replication in the primary infection site (Lu et al, 2021).…”

“…Since the window for rapid tests is narrow, testing will make with higher sensitivity methods such as PCR and reverse transcriptase (RT)-PCR, loop-mediated amplification (LAMP), and strand displacement amplification, which amplify a specific sequence of the viral genome. These methods, known as nucleic acid amplification techniques (NAAT), inactivate the virions during preliminary purification steps and can simultaneously detect multiple viruses (Lu et al, 2021). However, the presence of nucleic acid does not always mean active infection (Babiker et al, 2021), and significant issues stem during results interpretation: a weak signal explaining either the end of an infection or a recent evolving one and undetectable virus in the upper respiratory tract samples in the respiratory tract infections (Crozier et al, 2021).…”

“…The RTI account for 56 million deaths in 2019 in all age groups representing the third worldwide leading cause of death after cardiovascular diseases and neoplasms (IHME, 2021). The current protocols used to confirm the diagnosis of viral infection rely on virologic laboratory methods that either isolate and identify the pathogens or monitor the levels of antibodies in the body fluids (Loeffelholz and Tang, 2020;Lu et al, 2021). These methods involve laboratory techniques that require specialised equipment and technical expertise.…”