Analytical and Clinical Validation of Six Commercial Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus RNA Detection Kits Based on Real-Time Reverse-Transcription PCR

Kim, Mi-Na; Ko, Young Jin; Seong, Moon-Woo; Kim, Jae-Seok; Shin, Bo-Moon; Sung, Heungsup

In the present study, the LOD was analyzed by using a 0.5-log dilution series because a 0.5-log dilution is considered "within physiological variation or not significant" in viral kinetics [14] . However, this was limited in that the 0.5-log dilution scale was too wide to estimate the CI value for the Anyplex kit (Fig. 1) , and estimation of the LOD by probit regression analysis seemed to be less appropriate for the LightMix kit with a trailing tendency to much lower concentrations. The LOD for ORF1b using the DiaPlexQ kit was not measured, but the low sensitivity of this kit in detecting ORF1b in clinical specimens is consistent with a previous report, in which testing for ORF1b was less sensitive than testing for ORF1a or upE [7, 8] .