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Researchers at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) on Thursday have developed a new low-cost and low-tech required test for coronavirus testing. This test is known as reverse transcription nested PCR (RT-nPCR) test.
The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has recommended only reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) test for novel coronavirus testing.
This test does not require real-time quantitative RT-qPCR. The RT-nPCR developed by the CCMB research team has shown comparable performance to the standard RT-qPCR test, Ministry of Science and Technology said in a statement.
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The Ministry further told that in the course of comparing the results of both tests, researchers found that the standard RT-qPCR test can have low detection efficiency (less than 50%) in a real testing scenario, which may be due to low viral representation in many samples. This finding brought home the importance of monitoring detection efficiency directly in test environments.
“We developed and tested an RT-nPCR protocol comprising a multiplex primary RT-PCR for amplification of four SARS-CoV-2 amplicons and a control human amplicon followed by a secondary nested PCR for individual amplicons. We also examined the use of RT-nPCR in pooled testing and in direct amplification without RNA isolation,” said Dr Rakesh Mishra, Director, CCMB, while speaking with India Science Wire.
“This new test is awaiting approval from ICMR. We might ask ICMR to use this test in those places where there are no RT-qPCR machines,” he added.
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