RELEVANCE
The measles virus is characterized by extremely high contagiousness, prompting global initiatives aimed at curbing its spread. In addition to vaccination, early diagnosis plays an important role in reducing the spread of measles.
OBJECTIVE
To develop a kit for rapid diagnostics of measles based on the loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) method.
MATERIAL AND METHODS
The MAFFT program was used for multiple alignment of 696 measles virus nucleotide sequences. RNA extraction was performed using three kits from the Center for Strategic Planning and Management of Medical and Biological Health Risks of the Federal Medical and Biological Agency of Russia: “AmpliTest RIBO-prep”, “AmpliTest Magno-Sorb-Turbo” and “AmpliTest Magno-Sorb-Combo”. Clinical samples of nasopharyngeal secretions were obtained from the Labquest laboratory (Moscow) in 2024.
RESULTS
The analytical sensitivity of the kit was 1000 copies/ml of sample, which is comparable to the sensitivity of the RT-PCR-based method. The possibility of performing analyzing with different RNA extraction kits was demonstrated. The developed LAMP-based kit was tested on clinical material in comparison with the “AmpliTest Measles” kit. As a result of testing 50 oropharyngeal swabs, a high level of result concordance was shown (96% concordant samples).
CONCLUSION
The developed kit based on the RT-LAMP method for detecting measles virus RNA has analytical characteristics that are not inferior to the registered RT-PCR-based kit, and significantly outperforms it in terms of reaction speed.