Accuracy of clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) to diagnose COVID-19, a meta-analysis

Objective: To estimate the accuracy of clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) in determining coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19). Methods: As of January 31, 2022, PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, Science Direct, Wiley and Springer Link were searched. Sensitivity, specificity, likelihood ratio (LR), diagnostic odds ratio (DOR) and area under the summary receiver-operating characteristic (AUC) curve were used to assess the accuracy of CRISPR. Results: According to the inclusion criteria, 5857 patients from 54 studies were included in this meta-analysis. The pooled sensitivity, specificity and AUC were 0.98, 1.00 and 1.00, respectively. For CRISPR-associated (Cas) proteins-12, the sensitivity, specificity was 0.96, 1.00, respectively. For Cas-13, the sensitivity and specificity were 0.99 and 0.99. Conclusion: This meta-analysis showed that the diagnostic performance of CRISPR is close to the gold standard, and it is expected to meet the Point of care requirements in resource poor areas.