Application of vaginal tampon as an alternative to nasal swabs for higher recovery of DNA from sheep and goats for PCR based diagnosis of bovine tuberculosis.

A study was conducted to find the applicability of vaginal tampons as an alternative to regular cotton swabs as a nasal secretion collection tool for the higher recovery of DNA. Nasal secretions were collected from sheep and goats using regular cotton swab and tampon swab. The mean yield and purity of the DNA extracted from tampon were significantly higher than that of the DNA extracted from cotton swab. The tampon swabs resulted higher DNA recovery than the cotton swabs after they were allowed to absorb M. bovis culture. The tampon swab was also found to be more sensitive in detecting M. bovis by PCR. This study concluded that vaginal tampons are having a higher absorption capacity with more DNA yield and can be used as a nasal swab in the diagnosis of bovine tuberculosis.