Why NIV Pune study on presence of Covid virus in urine samples is important
covid-19 pandemic hit, but the world still remains at risk as new strains of the SARS CoV-2 virus continue to emerge. Despite developing newer treatment and diagnostic modalities, including very effective vaccines, the disease remains one of the major challenges in countries across the world. The World Health Organization estimates that till now about 400 million people have had the infection, and 5 million have died following complications from the disease.
In India, around 45 million cases have been reported with 531,918 deaths so far. Right now, RT-PCR detection of SARS CoV-2 through nasal and throat swabs is used to diagnose the majority of covid-19 cases and regarded as the gold standard for virus detection. However, the failure of RT-PCR in some cases in detecting the genes encoding the spike protein is a matter of concern.
Also, RT-PCR is unable to quantify the viral load from borderline samples. There have been numerous testing platforms that have received FDA approval to diagnose infection. These point-of-care tests are quick, but many of them have multiple disadvantages showing low sensitivity and high false-negative rates.
What is methodology of the NIV study? A total of 107 patients were recruited from different hospitals in Pune, between May 2020 and August 2021. RT-PCR results showed that all patients were positive for SARS CoV-2, and their faeces and urine samples collected. Around 20 samples from non-infected people were collected as a control to check the specificity of assay.
According to RT-PCR results, 106 samples were positive for stool and one for urine. The ddPCR results of the 106 positive stool samples were also positive. The study findings demonstrate that ddPCR performs better at detecting
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