• Claudia Alteri, Valeria Cento, Maria Antonello, Luna Colagrossi, Marco Merli, Nicola Ughi, Silvia Renica, Elisa Matarazzo, Federica Di Ruscio, Livia Tartaglione, Jacopo Colombo, Chiara Grimaldi, Stefania Carta, Alice Nava, Valentino Costabile, Chiara Baiguera, Daniela Campisi, Diana Fanti, Chiara Vismara, Roberto Fumagalli, Francesco Scaglione, Oscar Massimiliano Epis, Massimo Puoti, and Carlo Federico Perno.
• Department of Oncology and Hemato-oncology, University of Milan, Milan, Italy.
• Plos One. 2020 Jan 1; 15 (9): e0236311.

AbstractSince SARS-CoV-2-based disease (COVID-19) spreads as a pandemic, the necessity of a highly sensitive molecular diagnosis that can drastically reduce false negatives reverse transcription PCR (rtPCR) results, raises as a major clinical need. Here we evaluated the performance of a ddPCR-based assay to quantify SARS-CoV-2 titer in 55 suspected COVID-19 cases with negative rtPCR results thanks to in-house ddPCR assay (targeting RdRp and host RNaseP). Samples were collected at ASST-GOM Niguarda between February and May 2020 at hospital admission. Clinical and imaging data were obtained for clinical staging and definition of disease severity. Patients were mainly female (45.5%) with a median age of 73 (57-84) years. ddPCR-based assay detected SARS-CoV-2 genome in nasopharyngeal samples of 19 (34.5%) patients (median viral-load: 128 copies/mL, IQR: 72-345). In 15 of them (78.9%), chest CT showed a classical COVID-19 bilateral interstitial pneumonia; 14 patients (73.7%) showed severe COVID-19 manifestations. ddPCR did not identify any trace of SARS-CoV-2 genome in the respiratory samples of the remaining 36 patients. The serological assay performed in a subgroup of 34 patients at the later stage of illness (from 3 days to 90 days after) confirmed the presence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in all patients tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 in ddPCR (100%). Contrariwise, negative tests were observed in 95.0% ddPCR negative patients (P<0.001). Thanks to a ddPCR-based assay, we achieved a rapid and accurate SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis in rtPCR-negative respiratory samples of individuals with COVID-19 suspect, allowing the rapid taking care and correct management of these patients.

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