Over the past two years, a diagnosis of . has requiredCorona Virus The annoying nasal swab has been examined for many, but experts have concluded that this type of test is not optimal for detecting infection.
Dr. Donald Melton, an expert in respiratory viruses at the University of Maryland, said that the traditional approach to diagnosing respiratory infections was through the nose, according to the New York Times.
But the rapid spread of the omicron mutant, and questions about the sensitivity of home tests, have reignited the debate over whether the best way to detect the virus is to take a sample from a different site such as the mouth.
Some research has suggested that collecting saliva samples, or a mouth swab, can help identify people with the virus days before nasal swabs.
reliable method
Scientists had begun investigating the oral (via saliva) test in the early months of the epidemic, and were eager to find a method of testing that would be more comfortable than nasal swabs.
Also, some laboratory professionals were skeptical that a saliva test would be a reliable way to detect infection.
“There were concerns at first that saliva was not the optimal method, and that it was not the most sensitive sample,” said Glenn Hansen of the Laboratory of Microbiology and Molecular Diagnostics at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minnesota.
Corona Oral Test (Shutterstock)
But by the fall of 2020, dozens of studies suggested saliva was an appropriate sample for testing.
More accurate with Omicron
In addition, the advantages of a mouth swab may be more pronounced and precise with the omicron mutant, which appears to replicate more rapidly in the upper respiratory tract, and has a shorter incubation period than previous mutant.
Any test method that can reliably detect the virus early on is particularly valuable, experts said.
Some experts have also hypothesized that Omicron may be better at replicating in the cells of the mouth and throat than other variants.
Corona home examination (Shutterstock)
Researchers at the California Institute of Technology found that while the virus often replicates first in saliva, it is eventually present at higher levels in the nose.
Also, their results indicated that highly sensitive tests, such as PCR, may be able to detect infection in saliva days earlier than they do in nasal swabs, but that less sensitive tests, such as home antigen tests, may not.