Laboratory Detection of Respiratory Viruses by Automated Techniques

Pérez-Ruiz, Mercedes; Pedrosa-Corral, Irene; Sanbonmatsu-Gámez, Sara; Navarro-Marí, José-María

Samples from patients requiring hospitalisation with negative RSV or Flu antigen results should be subjected to extended virological study that includes viral culture assays and/or NAAT targeted at more or less RV depending on the severity of the disease and the need for a rapid result. With this premise, NAAT for detection of RSV and Flu (at the type and subtype level) in patients with less severe ARI, that do not require admission at intensive care units (ICU), should be carried out first of all. Otherwise, other molecular multiplexed methods of low complexity could be performed in certain patients that included hMPV, HRV and PIV detection, depending on patient's age and/or the existence of underlying diseases. More complex NAAT that detect other less frequent RV should be reserved to certain situations such as more severe cases (ICU patients) in which previous NAAT for the most prevalent viruses have yielded negative results [60] [61] [62] . At this level, automated and semi-automated NAAT may provide higher throughput than in-house protocols.