Usefulness of Combining Sputum and Nasopharyngeal Samples for Viral Detection by Reverse Transcriptase PCR in Adults Hospitalized with Acute Respiratory Illness

This study reveals that RT-PCR utilizing sputum significantly increased the detection rate for respiratory viral nucleic acids among adult patients admitted to the hospital, compared to nasopharyngeal swabs (NPS). Notably, combined samples of sputum and NPS maintained the majority of the improved sputum detection rate with only a few positive signal losses from NPS samples. In order to detect respiratory viruses in adult patients with acute respiratory illness, it is important to choose the optimal respiratory samples. This study helped to improve our understanding of this process.