Smartphone Screen Testing, a novel pre-diagnostic method to identify SARS-CoV-2 infectious individuals
- Institute of Ophthalmology, UCL, United Kingdom
- Diagnosis Biotech, Chile
- Grupo Oncológico Cooperativo Chileno de Investigación, Chile
- Clínica Dávila, Chile
- Clinica Davila, Chile
- University of Chile, Chile
- Faculty of Chemistry and Biology, University of Santiago of Chile, Chile
- Great Ormond Street Hospital National Health Service Foundation Trust, Chile
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic will likely take years to control globally, and constant epidemic surveillance will be required to limit the spread of SARS-CoV-2, especially considering the emergence of new variants that could hamper the effect of vaccination efforts. We developed a simple and robust - Phone Screen Testing (PoST) - method to detect positive SARS-CoV-2 individuals by RT-PCR testing of smartphone screen swab samples. We show that 81.3-100% of individuals with high-viral load SARS-CoV-2 nasopharyngeal positive samples also test positive for PoST, suggesting this method is effective in identifying COVID-19 contagious individuals. Furthermore, we successfully identified polymorphisms associated with SARS-CoV-2 Alpha, Beta and Gamma variants, in SARS-CoV-2 positive PoST samples. Overall, we report that PoST is a new non-invasive, cost-effective, and easy to implement smartphone-based smart alternative for SARS-CoV-2 testing, which could help to contain COVID-19 outbreaks and identification of variants of concern in the years to come.
Data availability
All the data used generated by this study was provided in the uploaded manuscript and source files.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Moorfields Eye Charity (Career Development Award 001155)
- Rodrigo M Young
Moorfields Eye Charity (Springboard Award GR001210)
- Rodrigo M Young
Agencia Nacional de Investigacion y Desarrollo Chile (ANID-Covid0789)
- Luis A Quiñones
Agencia Nacional de Investigacion y Desarrollo Chile (ANID-Covid1038)
- Ana M Sandino
Agencia Nacional de Investigacion y Desarrollo Chile (ANID-Covid1038)
- Ana M Sandino
Fondecyt (1211841)
- Felipe Reyes-Lopez
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Human subjects: Informed consent and consent to publish was obtained from all the individuals that participated in this study before performing the sampling process. This has been made explicit in the materials and methods section of the article. Ethical approval was obtained by the Ethics and Scientific Committee of Clinica Davila (Santiago, Chile) under the approval titled: "Identificación de marcadores de riesgo asociados a la severidad del Covid-19 en el microbioma respiratorio".
Copyright
© 2021, Young et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 7,459
- views
-
- 477
- downloads
-
- 9
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Smartphone Screen Testing, a novel pre-diagnostic method to identify SARS-CoV-2 infectious individuals
eLife 10:e70333.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.70333
Further reading
-
Mobile phones could be used to test for COVID-19
-
- Medicine
- Microbiology and Infectious Disease
Persisting HIV reservoir viruses in resting CD4 T cells and other cellular subsets are a barrier to cure efforts. Early antiretroviral therapy (ART) enables post-treatment viral control in some cases, but mechanisms remain unclear. We hypothesised that ART initiated before peak viremia impacts HIV-1 subtype C reservoirs. We studied 35 women at high risk of infection from Durban, South Africa, identified with hyperacute HIV by twice-weekly HIV-RNA testing. Participants included 11 starting ART at a median of 456 (297–1203) days post-onset of viremia (DPOV) and 24 at 1 (1–3) DPOV. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) were used to measured total HIV-1 DNA by droplet digital PCR (ddPCR) and sequence viral reservoir genomes by full-length proviral sequencing (FLIP-seq). ART during hyperacute infection blunted peak viremia (p<0.0001), but contemporaneous total HIV-1 DNA did not differ (p=0.104). Over 1 year, a decline of total HIV-1 DNA was observed in early treated persons (p=0.0004), but not late treated. Among 697 viral genome sequences, the proviral genetic landscape differed between untreated, late treated, and early treated groups. Intact genomes after 1 year were higher in untreated (31%) versus late treated (14%) and early treated (0%). Treatment in both late and early infection caused more rapid decay of intact (13% and 51% per month) versus defective (2% and 35%) viral genomes. However, intact genomes persisted 1 year post chronic treatment but were undetectable with early ART. Early ART also reduced phylogenetic diversity of intact genomes and limited cytotoxic T lymphocyte immune escape variants in the reservoir. Overall, ART initiated in hyperacute HIV-1 subtype C infection did not impact reservoir seeding but was associated with rapid intact viral genome decay, reduced genetic complexity, and limited immune escape, which may accelerate reservoir clearance in combination with other interventional strategies.
