Background/Objectives: Acute respiratory infections remain a major global public health concern affecting individuals across all ages. Accurate and rapid diagnosis of respiratory pathogens is crucial for effective patient management and infection control. Multiplex real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assays have gained prominence over conventional methods for routine viral detection in clinical laboratories owing to their enhanced sensitivity and specificity; however, comparative performance data for PowerChek™ RVP remain limited. This study aimed to evaluate the diagnostic performance of the PowerChek™ Respiratory Virus Panel 1/2/3/4, which detects 16 respiratory viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, in nasopharyngeal swab (NPS) specimens.
Methods: Overall, 336 NPS specimens were analyzed using the PowerChek™ RVP, BioFire
® RP 2.1
plus, and Allplex™ RP assays, with nucleic acid extraction performed using the Advansure™ E3 system. The performance metrics were calculated using two-by-two contingency tables.
Results: Among 336 NPS specimens (232 positive, 104 negative), PowerChek™ RVP detected 226 positives with minimal discrepancies, showing high concordance with BioFire
® RP 2.1
plus (accuracy 94.6%, kappa 0.843–1.000). Fifteen discordant cases were identified in this study. Eleven could not be sequenced because of amplification failure and most had high Ct values (>30). Sequencing of four samples confirmed concordance with BioFire
® RP 2.1
plus and PowerChek™ RVP, whereas Allplex™ RP showed false-negative results.
Conclusions: The PowerChek™ RVP assay demonstrated a high level of relative sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, diagnostic predictive values and strong concordance with comparable reference assays in identifying its targets. This assay is a reliable and efficient diagnostic tool for clinical laboratories to facilitate the accurate identification of respiratory pathogens.
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