Trends and Challenges of SPR Aptasensors in Viral Diagnostics: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) aptasensors benefit from the SPR phenomenon in measuring aptamer interactions with specific targets. Integrating aptamers into SPR detection enables extensive applications in clinical analysis. Specifically, virus design aptasensing platforms are highly desirable to face the ongoing challenges of virus outbreaks. This study systematically reviews the latest advances in SPR aptasensors for virus detection according to PRISMA guidelines. The literature search recovered 322 original articles from the Scopus (n = 152), Web of Science (n = 83), and PubMed (n = 87) databases. The selected articles (29) deal with the binding events between the aptamers immobilized on the sensor surface and their target molecule: virus proteins or intact viruses according to different SPR configurations. The methodological quality of each study was assessed using QUADAS-2, and a meta-analysis was conducted with the Cochrane RevMan software. Data were analyzed focusing on the types of viruses, the virus target, and the reference method. The pooled sensitivity was 1.89 (95%, CI 1.29, 2.78, I2 = 49%). The analysis of different types of plasmonic sensors showed the best diagnostic results with the least heterogeneity for SPR conventional configurations: 3.23 (95% CI [1.80, 5.79]; I2 = 0%, p = 0.65). These findings show that even though plasmonic biosensors effectively analyze viruses through aptamer approaches, there are still big challenges to using them regularly for diagnostics. Practical considerations for measuring label-free interactions revealed functional capabilities, technological boundaries, and future outlooks of SPR virus aptasensing.