Original scientific paper

https://doi.org/10.20471/acc.2024.63.02.3

Comparison of Abbott real time SARS-COV-2 assay and Liferiver Novel Coronavirus Real Time Multiplex kit for the RT-PCR based detection of SARS-COV-2 from nasopharyngeal swabs

Jelena Stojčević-Maletić orcid.org/0000-0002-9962-0810 ; University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Medicine, Novi Sad, Serbia; University Clinical Center of Vojvodina, Center for Laboratory Diagnostics, Novi Sad, Serbia *
Iva Barjaktarović ; University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Medicine, Novi Sad, Serbia; University Clinical Center of Vojvodina, Center for Laboratory Diagnostics, Novi Sad, Serbia
Mirjana Đerić ; University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Medicine, Novi Sad, Serbia; University Clinical Center of Vojvodina, Center for Laboratory Diagnostics, Novi Sad, Serbia
Velibor Čabarkapa ; University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Medicine, Novi Sad, Serbia; University Clinical Center of Vojvodina, Center for Laboratory Diagnostics, Novi Sad, Serbia
Vladimir Petrović ; University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Medicine, Novi Sad, Serbia; Institute of Public Health of Vojvodina, Novi Sad, Serbia
Aleksandra Patić ; University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Medicine, Novi Sad, Serbia; Institute of Public Health of Vojvodina, Novi Sad, Serbia
Slobodanka Bogdanović-Vasić ; Šabac High School of Medical and Business-Technology School of Professional Studies, Šabac, Serbia

* Corresponding author.

Abstract

The objective of this study was to compare performance of two authorized tests,
the Abbott Real Time SARS–CoV-2 (ACOV) assay (Abbott Molecular Inc., North Chicago, IL,
USA) and Liferiver Novel Coronavirus Real Time Multiplex RT-PCR (Liferiver 2019-nCoV) kit
(BioVendor Group, Brno, Czech Republic), and to determine whether the selection of targeted genes
has an impact on test specificity. We included 105 nasopharyngeal swabs from adult individuals with
symptoms or suspected of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), aged from 26 to 91 years, previously
tested by the ACOV and subsequently tested by the Liferiver 2019-nCoV. In this comparative analysis,
we found that the ACOV assay detected more cases of COVID-19 infection than the Liferiver 2019-
nCoV assay. The Liferiver 2019-nCoV kit showed a high level of agreement with the ACOV assay.
The positive percent agreement was 88.89% (95% confidence intervals (95% CI): 77.42%-100.0%),
and the kappa coefficient (kappa) was 0.901 (95% CI: 0.817-0.985). The negative percent agreement
was 94.12% (95% CI: 89.74%-98.50%), while 4.76% of SARS-CoV-2 cases were false-negative using
the Liferiver test. However, due to the possible false-negative results using the Liferiver 2019-nCOV
test, we recommend complete testing with the ACOV assay.

Keywords

Molecular diagnostics; Polymerase chain reaction; RNA isolation; Virus detection

Hrčak ID:

327944

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/327944

Publication date:

31.10.2025.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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