Evaluation of real-time reverse transcriptase PCR and real-time loop-mediated amplification assays for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus detection.

Poon, Leo L M; Wong, Bonnie W Y; Chan, Kwok H; Ng, Stella S F; Yuen, Kwok Y; Guan, Yi; Peiris, J S Malik

We compared the performance of a recently established real-time loop-mediated amplification (LAMP) assay with the one from a highly sensitive quantitative PCR assay. None of these assays produced false-positive results in this study. For samples isolated from patients within the first 3 days of disease onset, the detection rate of the quantitative PCR assay was higher (14 of 15 were positive) than the LAMP assay (9 of 15 were positive). By contrast, the detection rates of these assays toward specimens sampled from patients with more than 3 days of illness were similar (32 of 44 for PCR and 33 of 44 for LAMP were positive). The simpler operation of LAMP might be a possible solution for on-site diagnosis.