Viruses (Apr 2024)

Clinical Evaluation of the BIOFIRE SPOTFIRE Respiratory Panel

  • Wai-Sing Chan,
  • Christy Wing-Yiu Ho,
  • Tsz-Ching Chan,
  • Jeffrey Hung,
  • Man-Yan To,
  • Sau-Man Leung,
  • Ka-Chun Lai,
  • Ching-Yan Wong,
  • Chin-Pang Leung,
  • Chun-Hang Au,
  • Thomas Shek-Kong Wan,
  • Jonpaul Sze-Tsing Zee,
  • Edmond Shiu-Kwan Ma,
  • Bone Siu-Fai Tang

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/v16040600
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 16, no. 4
p. 600

Abstract

Read online

The BIOFIRE SPOTFIRE Respiratory (R) Panel is a novel, in vitro diagnostic PCR assay with 15 pathogen targets. The runtime is about 15 min which is the shortest among similar panels in the market. We evaluated the performance of the SPOTFIRE R Panel with 151 specimens, including 133 collected from the upper respiratory tract (URT), 13 from the lower respiratory tract (LRT) and 5 external quality assessment program (EQAP) samples. The respiratory specimens were enrolled throughout the first two post-COVID-19 influenza seasons in Hong Kong (March to December 2023). For URT specimens, full concordance was observed between the SPOTFIRE R Panel and the standard-of-care FilmArray Respiratory 2.1 plus Panel (RP2.1plus) for 109 specimens (109/133, 81.95%). After discrepant analysis, the SPOTFIRE R Panel identified more pathogens than the RP2.1plus in 15 specimens and vice versa in 3 specimens. The per-target negative and positive percentage agreement (NPA and PPA) were 92.86–100% except the PPA of adenovirus (88.24%). For LRT and EQAP samples, all results were fully concordant. To conclude, the performance of the SPOTFIRE R Panel was comparable to the RP2.1plus.

Keywords