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Updated: Feb 23, 2026
Detection and Genogrouping of Noroviruses from Children's Stools By Taqman One-step RT-PCR
Published on: July 22, 2012
Comparison of three multiplex gastrointestinal platforms for the detection of gastroenteritis viruses
Preeti Chhabra1, Nicole Gregoricus2, Geoffrey A Weinberg3
1Synergy America, Inc., Atlanta, GA, United States; Division of Viral Diseases, National Center for Immunizations and Respiratory Disease, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, United States.
Background:
Viruses are major etiological agents of childhood gastroenteritis. In recent years, several molecular platforms for the detection of viral enteric pathogens have become available.
Objective/Study Design:
We evaluated the performance of three multiplex platforms including Biofire's Gastrointestinal Panel (FilmArray), Luminex xTAG® Gastrointestinal Pathogen Panel (GPP), and the TaqMan Array Card (TAC) for the detection of five gastroenteritis viruses using a coded panel of 300 archived stool samples.
Results:
The FilmArray detected a virus in 199 (96.1%) and the TAC in 172 (83.1%) of the 207 samples (187 samples positive for a single virus and 20 samples positive for more than one virus) whereas the GPP detected a virus in 100 (78.7%) of the 127 (97 positive for one virus and three positive for more than one virus) samples. Overall the clinical accuracy was highest for the FilmArray (98%) followed by TAC (97.2%) and GPP (96.9%). The sensitivity of the FilmArray, GPP and TAC platforms was highest for rotavirus (100%, 95.8%, and 89.6%, respectively) and lowest for adenovirus type 40/41 (97.4%, 57.9% and 68.4%). The specificity of the three platforms ranged from 95.6% (rotavirus) to 99.6% (norovirus/sapovirus) for the FilmArray, 99.6% (norovirus) to 100% (rotavirus/adenovirus) for GPP, and 98.9% (astrovirus) to 100% (rotavirus/sapovirus) for TAC.
Conclusion:
The FilmArray demonstrated the best analytical performance followed by TAC. In recent years, the availability of multi-enteric molecular testing platforms has increased significantly and our data highlight the strengths and weaknesses of these platforms.
