Suggestions casted to the novel coronavirus nucleic acid amplification test from viral pneumonia pathogenesis/ 中华检验医学杂志

An outbreak of Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV), results in Coronavirus disease that began in Wuhan, China, has spread rapidly with cases now confirmed in multiple countries. Nucleic acid amplification test (NAAT), represent by reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) plays an important role in disease diagnosis and treatment evaluation. The test results by RT-PCR have attracted much attention recently. As understanding to this novel pathogen is still limited, it would be much help to combine the knowledge about its pathogenesis to judge the test results, in addition to review the quality control in laboratory. This review will focus on understanding the specific RT-PCR performance of the 2019-nCoV, under the background of viral pneumonia. The purpose of this review is to add value to NAAT of 2019-nCoV, with combined knowledge of epidemiology, pathogenesis, clinical characteristics and pre-analysis quality control from viral pneumonia. Key words: Pneumonia, viral; Coronavirus; Nucleic acids; Clinical laboratory techniques; Quality control