ArticleMicrobiology spectrum2022
Morning SARS-CoV-2 Testing Yields Better Detection of Infection Due to Higher Viral Loads in Saliva and Nasal Swabs upon Waking.
Article in Microbiology spectrum, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
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The trial behind it
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed.
- Trial
- Biological Rhythms in Coronavirus Pneumonia Pathogenesis.Journal of biological rhythms · 2026Article
- Analysis Of Salivary Herpesviruses Reveals Associations Between HHV-6 And Long COVID Severity.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Systematic evaluation of 24 extraction and library preparation combinations for metagenomic sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 in saliva.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Detection of viral sequences at single-cell resolution identifies novel viruses associated with host gene expression changes.Nature biotechnology · 2026Article
- Efficient and accurate detection of viral sequences at single-cell resolution reveals putative novel viruses perturbing host gene expression.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- The ratio between SARS-CoV-2 RNA viral load and culturable viral titre differs depending on the stage of infection: a case study of household transmission in an adult male.Access microbiology · 2025Article
- Comparison of SARS-CoV-2 RNA detection in different types of clinical specimens among suspected COVID-19 patients in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.Virusdisease · 2024Article
- SARS-CoV-2 Viral Load in the Nasopharynx at Time of First Infection Among Unvaccinated Individuals: A Secondary Cross-Protocol Analysis of 4 Randomized Trials.JAMA network open · 2024Article
- The potential of saliva as an accessible and sensitive sample type for the detection of respiratory pathogens and host immunity.The Lancet. Microbe · 2023Review
- Extreme differences in SARS-CoV-2 viral loads among respiratory specimen types during presumed pre-infectious and infectious periods.PNAS nexus · 2023Article
- Observational
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
16 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Optimizing specimen collection methods to achieve the most reliable SARS-CoV-2 detection for a given diagnostic sensitivity would improve testing and minimize COVID-19 outbreaks. From September 2020 to April 2021, we performed a household-transmission study in which participants self-collected specimens every morning and evening throughout acute SARS-CoV-2 infection. Seventy mildly symptomatic participants collected saliva, and of those, 29 also collected nasal swab specimens. Viral load was quantified in 1,194 saliva and 661 nasal swab specimens using a high-analytical-sensitivity reverse transcription-quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) assay. Viral loads in both saliva and nasal swab specimens were significantly higher in morning-collected specimens than in evening-collected specimens after symptom onset. This aspect of the biology of SARS-CoV-2 infection has implications for diagnostic testing. We infer that morning collection would have resulted in significantly improved detection and that this advantage would be most pronounced for tests with low to moderate analytical sensitivity. Collecting specimens for COVID-19 testing in the morning offers a simple and low-cost improvement to clinical diagnostic sensitivity of low- to moderate-analytical-sensitivity tests.
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