They could be a key weapon in the fight against the pandemic
, in May, was the first to allow people to provide their samples at home. The EUA only applied to tests that were conducted by its developers at Rutgers University; samples had to be collected in special tubes that the scientists sent to people and had to be analyzed at the Rutgers Clinical Genomics laboratory., which doesn’t require special containers—any standard sterile one that costs a few cents will do.
She notes that collecting samples with swabs is more standardized, and more people are trained and comfortable with the method’s reliability. That’s not yet true of saliva, and explains the reticence to rely on it early in the COVID-19 pandemic. There was also the fact that, in the early months of the outbreak, researchers weren’t sure saliva would be a good place to look for the virus, since most of the disease they were seeing involved the respiratory tract.
Like the PCR test—the current gold-standard method that looks for traces of SARS-CoV-2 genes and amplifies them—SalivaDirect also detects viral genetic material. But instead of extracting this genetic material from the sample using a chemical process, SalivaDirect relies on an enzyme to heat up the sample, with the same result of pulling out the viral genes. That helps scientists avoid any backlogs with in-demand agents.
“Saliva represents the collection of all oral fluids, from the salivary glands, nasal drip and even mucosal clearance from the lungs,” Wyllie says.
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