COVID-19 salivary Raman fingerprint: innovative approach for the detection of current and past SARS-CoV-2 infections
Cristiano Carlomagno, Dario Bertazioli, Alice Gualerzi, Silvia Picciolini, Paolo Banfi, Agata Lax, Enza Messina, Jorge Navarro, Luca Bianchi, Antonio Caronni, Francesco Marenco, Serena Monteleone, Chiara Arienti, Marzia Bedoni
Abstract
The pandemic of COVID-19 is continuously spreading, becoming a worldwide emergency. Early and fast identification of subjects with a current or past infection must be achieved to slow down the epidemiological widening. Here we report a Raman-based approach for the analysis of saliva, able to significantly discriminate the signal of patients with a current infection by COVID-19 from healthy subjects and/or subjects with a past infection. Our results demonstrated the differences in saliva biochemical composition of the three experimental groups, with modifications grouped in specific attributable spectral regions. The Raman-based classification model was able to discriminate the signal collected from COVID-19 patients with accuracy, precision, sensitivity and specificity of more than 95%. In order to translate this discrimination from the signal-level to the patient-level, we developed a Deep Learning model obtaining accuracy in the range 89-92%. These findings have implications for the creation of a potential Raman-based diagnostic tool, using saliva as minimal invasive and highly informative biofluid, demonstrating the efficacy of the classification model.