Sexually transmitted gonorrhea infection is a key worldwide public health issue, especially in low- and middle-income areas. The quest for ultrasensitive, highly specific, rapid, and accessible diagnostics for Neisseria gonorrhoeae is a critical component of global strategies to combat and treat gonorrhea. Herein, we first reported a PfAgo-N. gonorrhoeae diagnostic platform by integrating PfAgo-mediated detection with LAMP-based preamplification, and the results were analyzed via gold nanoparticle-based lateral flow biosensor (AuNP-LFB), real-time fluorescence intensity (RFI), or blue light. Our PfAgo-N. gonorrhoeae assay demonstrated a limit of detection (LoD) as low as five copies/test and presented no cross-reactivity with other tested pathogens. The detection procedure, comprising nucleic acid isolation (10 min), LAMP amplification (30 min), PfAgo detection (10 min), and AuNP-LFB visual readout (N. gonorrhoeae infection, and the outcomes were compared to the N. gonorrhoeae-qPCR technique. Our assay's sensitivity and specificity were 100% (95% CI: 93.28 to 100.00%) and 100% (95% CI: 81.47 to 100.00%). Taken together, the preliminary results indicated that our PfAgo-N. gonorrhoeae assay can act as a practical point-of-care (POC) diagnostic method, enabling accurate and convenient detection of N. gonorrhoeae infection, particularly in resource-limited settings.
Qin et al. (Wed,) studied this question.