Fajfr M, Stěpánová V, Plíšková L
Epidemiol Mikrobiol Imunol. 2014 Feb;63(1):10-6.
The evaluation of four post-pandemic influenza seasons 2009-2013 in the Faculty hospital Hradec Králové and comparison of used rapid antigen tests (RATs) with real time RT-PCR.
Between November 2009 and June 2013 were examined 3845 samples from patients with respiratory tract infections by RATs (Influenza A/B 2 Panel Test (GECKO® Pharma, Germany), Rapid VIDITEST Influenza A+B Card (VIDIA®, Czech Republic) and BinaxNOW Influenza A&B Test (ALERE®, USA) or real time RT-PCR (RTR InfA/H1N1 Detection Set (Roche®), RealStar® Influenza S and T RT-PCR Kit 3.0 (Altona ®, Germany).
A totally 1059 samples were examined simultaneously by RAT and real time RT-PCR. The overall sensitivity and specificity of RATs compared with real time RT-PCR were 32,2 % and 98,1 % for influenza A and 17,6 % and 99,4 % for influenza B. Higher sensitivity of RATs were in children (66,6 %) compared with adults (14,3 - 40,0 %). In the first three post-pandemic seasons were continuously decrease of positive samples from 23,5 % in season 2009-2010 to 3,3% in season 2011-2012, but in season 2012-2013 were rapidly in-crease of positive results, to 31,5%, with high share of influenza -A/H1N1/2009 (79,6%).
Our results shown insufficient sensitivity of all used RATs and necessity of having other confirmatory test, like RT-PCR. It was also shown unexplained increase of case and influenza severity in season 2012-2013.
