Rapid Testing for Children Barrels Ahead, Despite a Lack of Data

 

Etienne Laurent/EPA, via Shutterstock

Rapid Testing for Children Barrels Ahead, Despite a Lack of Data

Testing companies have revealed little about how their products perform in minors. That could be a problem.

...children, whose pint-size bodies might make the coronavirus more difficult to detect.

A small but growing body of evidence, some of which has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, suggests that some rapid tests for the coronavirus may falter in very young people, letting low-level infections slip by unnoticed.

In a recent study of more than 1,600 people in Massachusetts, Binax NOW, a rapid test manufactured by Abbott Laboratories, caught 96.5 percent of the coronavirus infections found by a more accurate laboratory test in adults with symptoms. But the rapid test detected just 77.8 percent of the symptomatic cases in people 18 or under. Among people without symptoms, the test faltered further, identifying 70.2 percent of adults and 63.6 percent of children.

 But without solid data demonstrating how coronavirus diagnostics perform in children, she added, it would be a mistake to assume that young people will test as easily as adults.

Nonetheless, the tests’ performance seems to have been taken for granted. 

In the rush to clear treatments, vaccines and diagnostics for widespread use, companies often neglect to include children in early trials that test whether products or therapies are safe and effective. But tests for viruses, bacteria and other infectious microbes that yield stellar results for adults do not always translate perfectly for children.

The reasons behind these differences are not always obvious, Dr. Pollock said. For instance, children’s immune systems might be better at homing in on and sequestering certain infectious invaders, making them harder to detect with standard-issue test