Evaluation of Alere i RSV for Rapid Detection of Respiratory Syncytial Virus in Children Hospitalized with Acute Respiratory Tract Infection

Peters, Rebecca Marie; Schnee, Sarah Valerie; Tabatabai, Julia; Schnitzler, Paul; Pfeil, Johannes

Altona RealStar RSV RT-PCR was RSV positive in 43% (49/114) and RSV negative in 57% ( The Alere i RSV test result was true positive in 49 out of 49 samples and true negative in 63 out of 65 samples. We did not undertake comprehensive analytical specificity testing but note that the 65 samples with a negative Altona RealStar RSV RT-PCR result included samples which had previously tested positive for influenza A (n Ï­ 10), influenza B (n Ï­ 6), parainfluenza (n Ï­ 3), human metapneumovirus (n Ï­ 9), coronavirus (n Ï­ 7), rhinovirus (n Ï­ 17), parechovirus (n Ï­ 1), and adenovirus (n Ï­ 1). Of the 2 samples with diverging test results, 1 test result was interpreted as false positive, whereas the other test result was invalid due to sample interference (Fig. 1) . In both cases, we could not conduct confirmation testing due to limited sample volume. For the calculation of the Alere i RSV specificity, both samples with diverging test results were considered false positive. We thus report a conservative estimate of the Alere i RSV performance.