Performance Evaluation of Allplex Respiratory Panels 1, 2, and 3 for the Detection of Respiratory Viral Infection

Background: The Allplex Respiratory Panels 1, 2, and 3 (Allplex; Seegene, Republic of Korea) is a one-step real-time reverse transcription-PCR method based on the multiple detection temperature (MuDT) technology for the detection of respiratory viral infections. In this study, we evaluated the performance of the Allplex assay by comparing it with that of the Anyplex II RV16 detection kit (Anyplex; Seegene), a multiplex real-time PCR assay based on the tagging oligonucleotide cleavage and extension technology. Methods: A total of 400 clinical respiratory specimens that were previously tested by the Anyplex assay (300 samples that revealed positive results, and 100 samples that revealed negative results) were analyzed using the Allplex assay. Results: After comparing both assays for detecting each virus, the range of positive percent agreement, negative percent agreement, and kappa values were found to be 91.7% to 100%, 94.1% to 100%, and 0.659 to 1.000, respectively. The uniplex PCR and sequencing for the samples with discrepant results revealed that a majority of the results were concordant with the results from the Allplex assay. In addition, the Allplex assay was superior in detecting multiple viruses. Conclusions: The Allplex assay produces results comparable to those of the Anyplex assay. Thus, the Allplex assay can be proposed as a rapid and accurate method for detecting respiratory viruses, especially for the detection of multiple viral infections.