Publication demonstrates effectiveness and ease of use for routine testing
Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, has a world-class virology department that serves as a consultation center for the World Health Organization, among many other prestigious affiliations. We are delighted to see that scientists from the Department of Viroscience at Erasmus MC recently published the results of a study evaluating the ARIES® System and Flu A/B & RSV CE-IVD Assay.
The publication, “Performance evaluation of a rapid molecular diagnostic, MultiCode based, sample-to-answer assay for the simultaneous detection of Influenza A, B and respiratory syncytial viruses,” came out in the Journal of Clinical Virology. Lead author Jolanda Voermans, senior author Suzan Pas, and colleagues are affiliated with the viroscience and pediatric departments at Erasmus MC.
For the study, the team compared the ARIES® Flu A/B & RSV assay to a laboratory-developed assay, a direct immunofluorescence assay, and a non-molecular commercial assay. They assessed performance on stored respiratory samples collected between 2006 and 2015, and on fresh clinical samples collected at the beginning of this year, for a total of 447 clinical samples.
The ARIES® assay demonstrated 100% genotype inclusivity as well as analytical specificity, the authors reported. While the lab-developed assay proved to be the most sensitive, the ARIES® assay detected 10.6% and 26.9% more samples than the direct immunofluorescence assay and the non-molecular commercial assay, respectively.
The team tested nasopharyngeal swabs, and other sample types more common to their lab, such as throat swabs and nasal washings.
“Although analytically ARIES is less sensitive [than the lab-developed assay], the clinical performance of the assay in our tertiary care setting was comparable, and significantly better than that of the established rapid assays,” the authors concluded.
Read the study summary, ‘Performance evaluation of a rapid molecular diagnostic, MultiCode based, sample-to-answer assay for the simultaneous detection of Influenza A, B and respiratory syncytial viruses’, published in the Journal of Clinical Virology, December 2016, Volume 85, Pages 65–70.
Disclaimer: The ARIES® Flu A/B & RSV cassettes for this study were provided by Luminex Corporation as part of a research agreement.
Learn more about the ARIES® Flu A/B & RSV Assay.
