Diagnostic Utility of Antigen Detection Rapid Diagnostic Tests for Covid- 19: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

BackgroundEarly detection of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) infection to improve disease management, becomes the greatest challenge. Despite high sensitivity of RT-PCR, not only it was reported that 20-67% of infected patients have false negative results. Rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) are widely used as a point-of-care test for SARS-CoV-2 detection in both pharyngeal and blood specimens. To be less time-consuming, not seem so costly, and requiring no special training make it more favorable, but the low sensitivity is the main limitation. Several reports indicated rapid test of blood and pharyngeal samples has the same sensitivity as the RT-PCR, but some reports have lower sensitivity especial in asymptomatic patients. MethodsIn the present survey, we investigate the eligible studies for sensitivity and specificity of rapid tests and explore the factors that influence the result to help better diagnose COVID-19 infection. 20 studies met the inclusion criteria, which impose 33 different tests. ResultsOur findings showed, type of sample, type of assay, time of sampling, and load of virus influence on sensitivity of RDTs. ConclusionThis research extends our knowledge of how to improve the sensitivity of RDTs to better diagnose of infected patients to address the controlling COVID-19 pandemic.