Keep your nose out of it: Saliva tests may be just as good as nose swabs for COVID-19

Embargoed until: Publicly released:
Peer-reviewed: This work was reviewed and scrutinised by relevant independent experts.

Meta-analysis: This type of study involves using statistics to combine the data from multiple previous studies to give an overall result. The reliability of a meta-analysis depends on both the quality and similarity of the individual studies being grouped together.

Systematic review: This type of study is a structured approach to reviewing all the evidence to answer a specific question. It can include a meta-analysis which is a statistical method of combining the data from multiple studies to get an overall result.

People: This is a study based on research using people.

A review of studies has found that saliva sample-based tests are just as good as nose swab based tests when it comes to detecting the virus that causes COVID-19, raising all our hopes that we could one day say goodbye to that uncomfortable nose poke. The researchers looked at the data for PCR based COVID tests - the standard test for diagnosis of coronavirus -  and compared the results of saliva-based test with nose swab-based tests across 16 unique studies. They found the saliva tests correctly identified 83.2 per cent of those with the disease compared to 84.8 per cent for nose swab tests. The saliva tests also correctly identified 99.2 per cent of those without the disease compared to 98.9 for the nose-swab.

Journal/conference: JAMA Internal Medicine

Link to research (DOI): 10.1001/jamainternmed.2020.8876

Organisation/s: McGill University, Canada

Funder: This study was supported by a joint scholarship from the Fonds the Recherche du Québec–Santé and Québec’s Ministry of Health and Social Services (Dr Butler-Laporte), by the Intramural Research Program of the National Institutes of Health, Clinical Center (Dr Lawandi), by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research grant PJT-156039 (Dr Dendukuri), and by research salary funds from the Fonds de Recherche du Québec–Santé (Drs McDonald and Lee).

Media release

From: JAMA

Comparing Accuracy of Saliva Sample, Nasal Swab for Detection of SARS-CoV-2

JAMA Internal Medicine
Original Investigation

What The Study Did: Researchers compared the accuracy of nucleic acid amplification testing of saliva samples with nasal swab samples for the diagnosis of COVID-19 by combining the results of 16 studies with nearly 6,000 patients.

Authors: Guillaume Butler-Laporte, M.D., of Royal Victoria Hospital in Montréal, is the corresponding author.

(doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2020.8876)

Editor’s Note: The article includes conflicts of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

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