Open AccessRapid Screening of COVID-19 Directly from Clinical Nasopharyngeal Swabs Using the MasSpec Pen
Author(s) -
Kyana Y. Garza,
Alex Silva,
Jonas Ribeiro da Rosa,
Michael F. Keating,
Sydney C. Povilaitis,
Meredith Spradlin,
Pedro Henrique Godoy Sanches,
Alexandre Varão Moura,
Junier Marrero-Gutiérrez,
Jianguo Lin,
Jialing Zhang,
Rachel J. DeHoog,
Alena Bensussan,
Sunil Badal,
Danilo Cardoso de Oliveira,
Pedro Henrique Dias Garcia,
Lisamara Dias de Oliveira Negrini,
Marcia Ap Antonio,
Thiago C. Canevari,
Marcos N. Eberlin,
Robert Tibshirani,
Lívia S. Eberlin,
Andréia M. Porcari
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
analytical chemistry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.117
H-Index - 332
eISSN - 1520-6882
pISSN - 0003-2700
DOI - 10.1021/acs.analchem.1c01937
Subject(s) - asymptomatic , gold standard (test) , covid-19 , polymerase chain reaction , assay sensitivity , medicine , chemistry , pathology , infectious disease (medical specialty) , biochemistry , alternative medicine , disease , gene
The outbreak of COVID-19 has created an unprecedent global crisis. While the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is the gold standard method for detecting active SARS-CoV-2 infection, alternative high-throughput diagnostic tests are of a significant value to meet universal testing demands. Here, we describe a new design of the MasSpec Pen technology integrated to electrospray ionization (ESI) for direct analysis of clinical swabs and investigate its use for COVID-19 screening. The redesigned MasSpec Pen system incorporates a disposable sampling device refined for uniform and efficient analysis of swab tips via liquid extraction directly coupled to an ESI source. Using this system, we analyzed nasopharyngeal swabs from 244 individuals including symptomatic COVID-19 positive, symptomatic negative, and asymptomatic negative individuals, enabling rapid detection of rich lipid profiles. Two statistical classifiers were generated based on the lipid information acquired. Classifier 1 was built to distinguish symptomatic PCR-positive from asymptomatic PCR-negative individuals, yielding a cross-validation accuracy of 83.5%, sensitivity of 76.6%, and specificity of 86.6%, and validation set accuracy of 89.6%, sensitivity of 100%, and specificity of 85.3%. Classifier 2 was built to distinguish symptomatic PCR-positive patients from negative individuals including symptomatic PCR-negative patients with moderate to severe symptoms and asymptomatic individuals, yielding a cross-validation accuracy of 78.4%, specificity of 77.21%, and sensitivity of 81.8%. Collectively, this study suggests that the lipid profiles detected directly from nasopharyngeal swabs using MasSpec Pen-ESI mass spectrometry (MS) allow fast (under a minute) screening of the COVID-19 disease using minimal operating steps and no specialized reagents, thus representing a promising alternative high-throughput method for screening of COVID-19.