Rapid diagnostic tests for influenza

Rapid diagnostic tests, or point-of-care tests, generally refer to simple tests that can either be carried out at the bedside or in a non-specialized local facility without the need to transport the sample to a modern laboratory for testing. Rapid influenza diagnostic tests (RIDTs) are primarily carried out in developed countries such as Japan and the USA in doctor's surgeries where they are used to confirm influenza prior to the prescription of influenza antiviral drugs. The current influenza RIDTs can be broadly separated based on the detection of either influenza viral antigen or influenza nucleic acid. In their simplest form, antigen detection RIDTs (AD RIDTs) typically use chromatographic or fluorescence-based immunoassays to detect the viral nucleoprotein of either influenza A or B viruses and these tests can be further divided into those that are read by eye and those that are read by an analyzer. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons Inc