Kinloch Natalie N, Shahid Aniqa, Ritchie Gordon, Dong Winnie, Lawson Tanya, Montaner Julio S G, Romney Marc G, Stefanovic Aleksandra, Matic Nancy, Brumme Chanson J, Lowe Christopher F, Brumme Zabrina L, Leung Victor
Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada.
British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Open Forum Infect Dis. 2020 Oct 14;7(11):ofaa488. doi: 10.1093/ofid/ofaa488. eCollection 2020 Nov.
Nasopharyngeal swabs are critical to the diagnosis of respiratory infections including coronavirus disease 2019, but collection techniques vary. We compared 2 recommended nasopharyngeal swab collection techniques in adult volunteers and found that swab rotation following nasopharyngeal contact did not recover additional nucleic acid (as measured by human DNA/RNA copy number). Rotation was also less tolerable for participants. Notably, both discomfort and nucleic acid recovery were significantly higher in Asian participants, consistent with nasal anatomy differences. Our results suggest that it is unnecessary to rotate the swab in place following contact with the nasopharynx and reveal that procedural discomfort levels can differ by ethnicity.
鼻咽拭子对于包括2019冠状病毒病在内的呼吸道感染诊断至关重要，但采集技术各不相同。我们在成年志愿者中比较了两种推荐的鼻咽拭子采集技术，发现鼻咽接触后旋转拭子并不能获取更多核酸（以人类DNA/RNA拷贝数衡量）。参与者对旋转也更难以耐受。值得注意的是，亚洲参与者的不适感和核酸获取量均显著更高，这与鼻腔解剖结构差异一致。我们的结果表明，接触鼻咽后无需原地旋转拭子，并揭示了操作不适程度可能因种族而异。
