Alternate nucleic acid targets can be used to create a composite standard to evaluate clinical performance of nucleic acid amplification tests

Abstract

Evaluating the clinical performance of a new nucleic acid amplification test (NAAT) for Mycoplasma genitalium, B. Kirkconnell, B. Weinbaum, K. Santos, T. Le Nguyen, et al. (J Clin Microbiol 57:e00264-19, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1128/JCM.00264 -19) created 3 alternate NAATs that detected other unique M. genitalium gene targets. Lacking a reference standard, they used the consensus of results with those 3 NAATs as the comparator. This approach could be a new paradigm to evaluate new NAATs when there is no previously defined reference standard.