LamPORE evaluation study shows 99.1% sensitivity, 99.6% specificity
Scientists from the University of Oxford’s Nuffield Department of Medicine, Public Health England Porton Down (PHE), the University of Sheffield, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust have today published their evaluation of LamPORE, Oxford Nanopore Technologies’ SARS-CoV-2 detection assay. The paper is available at MedRxiv, the preprint server and studies more than 500 clinical samples.
The positive clinical specimens came mostly from patients with symptomatic infection, and among these LamPORE had a diagnostic sensitivity of 99.1% (i.e. it was positive in 226 of 228 samples positive by RT-PCR). Among negative clinical specimens, including 153 with other respiratory pathogens detected, LamPORE had a diagnostic specificity of 99.6% (i.e. it was negative in 278 of 279 samples negative by RT-PCR). Overall, 1.4% of samples produced an indeterminate result on first testing, and repeat LamPORE testing on the same RNA extract had a reproducibility of 96.8%.