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. 2010 Sep;48(9):3340-2.
doi: 10.1128/JCM.02235-09. Epub 2010 Jul 7.

Development and evaluation of a flocked nasal midturbinate swab for self-collection in respiratory virus infection diagnostic testing

Marek Smieja  1 , Santina Castriciano, Susan Carruthers, Geoffrey So, Sylvia Chong, Kathy Luinstra, James B Mahony, Astrid Petrich, Max Chernesky, Mario Savarese, Daniele Triva
Affiliations

Development and evaluation of a flocked nasal midturbinate swab for self-collection in respiratory virus infection diagnostic testing

Marek Smieja et al. J Clin Microbiol. 2010 Sep.

Abstract

We developed and evaluated flocked nasal midturbinate swabs obtained from 55 asymptomatic and 108 symptomatic volunteers. Self-collected swabs obtained from asymptomatic volunteers yielded numbers of respiratory epithelial cells comparable to those of staff-collected nasal (n = 55) or nasopharyngeal (n = 20) swabs. Specific viruses were detected in swabs self-collected by 42/108 (38.9%) symptomatic volunteers by multiplex PCR.

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Figures

FIG. 1.
FIG. 1.
Flocked nasal midturbinate swab (top) compared to flocked nasopharyngeal (middle) and rayon nasopharyngeal (bottom) swabs, used for both nasal and nasopharyngeal sampling.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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