Salivary diagnostics of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19)

Abstract

Introduction: Laboratory testing for the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the consequent respiratory coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is categorized into methods that detect the viral presence and methods that detect antibodies produced in the host as a response to infection. Methods that detect viral presence into the host excretions measure current infection by SARS-CoV-2, whereas the detection of human antibodies exploited against SARS-CoV-2 evaluates the past exposure to the virus.

Objective: This review provides a comprehensive overview for the use of saliva as a specimen for the detection of SARS-CoV-2, the methods for the salivary diagnostics utilized till very recently, and the arisen considerations for the diagnosis of COVID-19 disease.

Conclusion: The major advantage of using saliva as a specimen for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 is that saliva collection is a non-invasive method which produces no discomfort to the patient and permits the patients to utilize home self-sampling techniques in order to protect health providers from the exposure to the pathogen. There is an urgent need to increase the active research for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 in the saliva because the non-invasive salivary diagnostics may provide a reliable and cost-effective method suitable for the fast and early detection of COVID-19 infection.

Keywords: COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; antibodies; diagnosis; saliva; salivary diagnostics.

FIGURE 1

Relative positions of amplicon targets on the SARS coronavirus and the 2019 novel coronavirus genome. E: envelope protein gene; M: membrane protein gene; N: nucleocapsid protein gene; ORF: open reading frame; RdRp: RNA‐dependent RNA polymerase gene; S: spike protein gene. Numbers below amplicons are genome positions according to SARS‐CoV, GenBank NC_004718 (Corman et al., 2020)