Comparison of Luminex NxTAG Respiratory Pathogen Panel and xTAG Respiratory Viral Panel FAST Version 2 for the Detection of Respiratory Viruses

Lee, Chun Kiat; Lee, Hong Kai; Ng, Christopher Wei Siong; Chiu, Lily; Tang, Julian Wei-Tze; Loh, Tze Ping; Koay, Evelyn Siew-Chuan

Enterovirus/rhinovirus infections comprised 27.5% (39/142) of our study population. However, the inability of both Luminex assays to distinguish enterovirus from rhinovirus infections in patients lowers their overall clinical utility. This distinction is clinically important, particularly for septic workups in neonates and other vulnerable/immunocompromised patients, as enteroviruses can disseminate to cause systemic infection and involve multiple organs, whereas rhinoviruses generally do not [11] . The RVP assay can detect multiple viral targets simultaneously. Our study revealed nine cases of co-infections. Most of the co-infections www.annlabmed.org https://doi.org/10.3343/alm.2017.37.3.267 Of note, the internal control signal intensity was higher than that in previous runs. After repeating the bead hybridization step, sample A was negative for all viral targets (false-positive) and the internal control signal intensity was within the expected range (bottom left). (B) Sample B initially tested positive for seasonal influenza A/H1N1 virus, influenza A/H1N1/2009 virus, and enterovirus/rhinovirus (top right). Again, the internal control signal intensity was higher than that in previous runs. After repeating the bead hybridization step, seasonal influenza A/H1N1 virus signal was found to be negative (false-positive), and the internal control signal intensity was within the expected range (bottom right). Subsequent investigation revealed that the high background is likely due to operator variations.