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virusduck | 5 years ago
In general, titers of the virus in NP swabs should be high enough to withstand 10, maybe 20-plex pooling. However, as you allude to, there are plenty of other effects that can influence PCR. If there is one sample, for example, that contains a PCR inhibitor, like heme, it may then inhibit all the samples it is pooled with.
Additionally, swabs are not just swabs of virus, they also pull of highly variant amounts of bacteria and human material. These things may also affect the efficiency of PCR.
bhickey|5 years ago
Yes, thanks, fixed.
Check out Table 1 in this paper. It isn't very encouraging. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jmv.25971