ArticleScience translational medicine2021
Lessons from applied large-scale pooling of 133,816 SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR tests.
Article in Science translational medicine, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 53 papers.
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Who cites it
53 citing papers in PubMed.
- Efficient high-risk human papillomavirus screening through pooled testing: a simulation study based on real-world data in low- and middle-income countries.Journal of global health · 2026Article
- Risk factors associated with cytomegalovirus reactivation and disease in critically-ill COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 patients, concomitantly admitted to intensive care.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Acute SARS-CoV-2 infection.Nature reviews. Disease primers · 2025Review
- Evaluation of sample pooling using Xpert Carba-R and XpertMicrobiology spectrum · 2025Article
- Article
- Implementation of pooled testing to increase access to routine viral load monitoring for people living with HIV on antiretroviral therapy.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Genomic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 variants using pooled WGS.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Advances in Virus Biorecognition and Detection Techniques for the Surveillance and Prevention of Infectious Diseases.Biosensors · 2025Review
- Assessment of the Effective Sensitivity of SARS-CoV-2 Sample Pooling Based on a Large-Scale Screening Experience: Retrospective Analysis.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2024Article
- Surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 prevalence from repeated pooled testing: application to Swiss routine data.Epidemiology and infection · 2024Article
- Review
- High capacity clinical SARS-CoV-2 molecular testing using combinatorial pooling.Communications medicine · 2024Article
- Semi-quantitative group testing for efficient and accurate qPCR screening of pathogens with a wide range of loads.BMC bioinformatics · 2024Article
- Testing pooled samples enables universal screening of congenital cytomegalovirus infection.Nature medicine · 2024Article
- Implementation of pooled saliva tests for universal screening of cCMV infection.Nature medicine · 2024Article
- Marginal effects of public health measures and COVID-19 disease burden in China: A large-scale modelling study.PLoS computational biology · 2023Article
- Adaptive group testing strategy for infectious diseases using social contact graph partitions.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Pooled RNA-extraction-free testing of saliva for the detection of SARS-CoV-2.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- The efficient design of Nested Group Testing algorithms for disease identification in clustered data.Journal of applied statistics · 2023Article
- Singleplex, multiplex and pooled sample real-time RT-PCR assays for detection of SARS-CoV-2 in an occupational medicine setting.Scientific reports · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
18 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Pooling multiple swab samples before RNA extraction and real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) analysis has been proposed as a strategy to reduce costs and increase throughput of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) tests. However, reports on practical large-scale group testing for SARS-CoV-2 have been scant. Key open questions concern reduced sensitivity due to sample dilution, the rate of false positives, the actual efficiency (number of tests saved by pooling), and the impact of infection rate in the population on assay performance. Here, we report an analysis of 133,816 samples collected between April and September 2020 and tested by Dorfman pooling for the presence of SARS-CoV-2. We spared 76% of RNA extraction and RT-PCR tests, despite the frequently changing prevalence (0.5 to 6%). We observed pooling efficiency and sensitivity that exceeded theoretical predictions, which resulted from the nonrandom distribution of positive samples in pools. Overall, our findings support the use of pooling for efficient large-scale SARS-CoV-2 testing.
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