Diagnostic performance comparison of SE-SPTM-PCR and miRNA deep sequencing using 2-fold gradient dilutions of simulated HCMV viral infection samples

We developed SE-SPTM-PCR, a detection platform integrating selective miRNA enrichment using locked nucleic acid probes with specific probe terminal-mediated RT-qPCR. To evaluate the ability of the SE-SPTM-PCR platform to discriminate samples with only slight differences in load, we tested simulated specimens with two-fold serial dilutions using both SE-SPTM-PCR and miRNA sequencing.

These simulated specimens were prepared by spiking HCMV viral culture supernatant (propagated in MRC5 cells) into plasma samples obtained from three groups of age- and sex-matched healthy donors (n=10 per group). The results demonstrated that the diagnostic performance of the SE-SPTM-PCR platform significantly outperformed that of miRNA sequencing.