@article{oai:nagasaki-u.repo.nii.ac.jp:00026836,
 author = {Ota, Kenji and Yanagihara, Katsunori and Sasaki, Daisuke and Kaku, Norihito and Uno, Naoki and Sakamoto, Kei and Kosai, Kosuke and Miyazaki, Taiga and Hasegawa, Hiroo and Fujita, Ayumi and Tashiro, Masato and Tanaka, Takeshi and Izumikawa, Koichi and Ariyoshi, Koya and Mukae, Hiroshi and Yasuda, Jiro and Morita, Kouichi and Kohno, Shigeru},
 issue = {6},
 journal = {PLoS ONE},
 month = {Jun},
 note = {Objectives: The accurate detection of severe acute respiratory syndrome–coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is essential for the diagnosis of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). We compared the quantitative RT-PCR results between nasopharyngeal swabs and saliva specimens.
Methods: A COVID-19 outbreak occurred on a cruise ship at Nagasaki port, Japan. We obtained 123 nasopharyngeal swabs and saliva each from asymptomatic or mild patients in the late phase of infection.
Results: The intervals from the diagnosis to the sampling were 25.5 days for nasopharyngeal swabs and 28.9 days for saliva. The positive rate was 19.5% (24/123) for nasopharyngeal swabs and 38.2% (47/123) for saliva (P = 0.48). The quantified viral copies (mean ± SEM copies/5 μl) were 9.3±2.6 in nasopharyngeal swabs and 920±850 in saliva (P = 0.0006).
Conclusions: The advantages of saliva specimens include positive rate improvement and accurate viral load detection. Saliva may be used as a reliable sample for SARS-CoV-2 detection., PLoS ONE, 16(6), art. no. e0252964; 2021},
 title = {Detection of SARS-CoV-2 using qRT-PCR in saliva obtained from asymptomatic or mild COVID-19 patients, comparative analysis with matched nasopharyngeal samples},
 volume = {16},
 year = {2021}
}