Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of a Urine-Based Pneumococcal Antigen Test for Diagnosis of Community-Acquired Pneumonia Caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae

Standard culture methods for diagnosis of Streptococcus pneumoniae pneumonia take at least 24 h. The BinaxNOW urine-based test for S. pneumoniae (BinaxNOW-SP) takes only 15 min to conduct, potentially enabling earlier diagnosis and targeted treatment. This study was conducted to assess whether the use of BinaxNOW-SP at the time of hospital admission would provide adequate sensitivity and specificity for diagnosis of community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) in adult patients. We searched PubMed, EMBASE/OVID, Cochrane Collaboration, Centre for Reviews and Dissemination, INAHTA, and CADTH for diagnostic or etiologic studies of hospitalized predominately adult patients with clinically defined CAP that reported the diagnostic performance of BinaxNOW-SP versus cultures. Two authors independently extracted study details and diagnostic two-by-two tables. We found that 27 studies met our inclusion criteria, and three different reference standards were used between them. A bivariate meta-analysis of 12 studies using a composite of culture tests as the reference standard estimated the sensitivity of BinaxNOW-SP as 68.5% (95% credibility interval [CrI], 62.6% to 74.2%) and specificity as 84.2% (95% CrI, 77.5% to 89.3%). A meta-analysis of all 27 studies, adjusting for the imperfect and variable nature of the reference standard, gave a higher sensitivity of 74.0% (CrI, 66.6% to 82·3%) and specificity of 97.2% (CrI, 92.7% to 99.8%). The analysis showed substantial heterogeneity across studies, which did not decrease with adjustment for covariates. We concluded that the higher pooled sensitivity (compared to culture) and high specificity of BinaxNOW-SP suggest it would be a useful addition to the diagnostic workup for community-acquired pneumonia. More research is needed regarding the impact of BinaxNOW-SP on clinical practice.