Comparison Of Saliva And Nasopharyngeal Swab Nucleic Acid Amplification Testing For Detection Of SAR

For COVID-19, researchers compared the diagnostic accuracy of saliva nucleic acid amplification testing (NAAT) vs nasopharyngeal NAAT. They conducted this systematic review and latent class meta-analysis adjusting for the imperfect reference standard. Findings revealed that sensitivity and specificity of saliva NAAT were comparable to that of nasopharyngeal NAAT. Given the ease of use and good diagnostic performances, these findings suggest the value of saliva NAAT as an attractive alternative to nasopharyngeal swab NAAT and its possible capability to significantly boost massive testing efforts. In the primary analysis, the saliva NAAT pooled sensitivity was 83.2% and the pooled specificity was 99.2%, while the nasopharyngeal swab NAAT had a sensitivity of 84.8% and a specificity of 98.9%.

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