A Mahidol University research team has reported success in the development of the country's first saliva-based Covid-19 test kit.
Dr Siriorn Watcharananan, a research team member, said in a press conference on Friday that her colleagues based their detection study on the fact that salivary glands are filled with a receptor to Sars-CoV2, which develops into the coronavirus disease.
Dr Siriorn, who is also from the Faculty of Medicine at Ramathibodi Hospital, said based on the evidence, which was backed by international research, her team set up a hypothesis that the virus could be detected in a patient's saliva.
The team's kit would be more accurate, affordable and safer for frontline health workers compared to the current reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) technique, she said.
Currently, RT-PCR is the main method used to check and confirm Covid-19 infections. The number of RT-PCR test kits is limited and costly, and the kit's throat swab method puts medical staff at high risk of infection, she said.
Dr Siriorn said her team last month tested 200 samples from suspected adult patients at the hospital through various methods, including throat swabs and saliva.
She said results showed the throat swab method identified 19 cases, while the saliva test identified 18.
Dr Siriorn noted that saliva testing produced 84.2% sensitivity, 98.9% specificity and 97.5% agreement.
"This is our first achievement and we are going to do more to cut down expenditure for the virus test," she said. "We are going to develop saline testing, instead of using expensive chemicals."
The university is also working with Zenotic to develop a quick Covid-19 detection kit.
Somchai Chauvatcharin, director of the Centre of Excellence on Medical Biotechnology, said the development of new tech, such as the Colorimetric RE-LAMP, could help reduce the cost of test kits.
