Soto Raymond, Paul Litty, Porucznik Christina A, Xie Heng, Stinnett Rita Czako, Briggs Benjamin, Biggerstaff Matthew, Stanford Joseph, Schlaberg Robert
Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, United States.
IDbyDNA, Salt Lake City, UT, United States.
JMIR Form Res. 2023 Nov 24;7:e32848. doi: 10.2196/32848.
The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has underscored the need for field specimen collection and transport to diagnostic and public health laboratories. Self-collected nasal swabs transported without dependency on a cold chain have the potential to remove critical barriers to testing, expand testing capacity, and reduce opportunities for exposure of health professionals in the context of a pandemic.
We compared nasal swab collection by study participants from themselves and their children at home to collection by trained research staff.
Each adult participant collected 1 nasal swab, sampling both nares with the single swab, after which they collected 1 nasal swab from 1 child. After all the participant samples were collected for the household, the research staff member collected a separate single duplicate sample from each individual. Immediately after the sample collection, the adult participants completed a questionnaire about the acceptability of the sampling procedures. Swabs were placed in temperature-stable preservative and respiratory viruses were detected by shotgun RNA sequencing, enabling viral genome analysis.
In total, 21 households participated in the study, each with 1 adult and 1 child, yielding 42 individuals with paired samples. Study participants reported that self-collection was acceptable. Agreement between identified respiratory viruses in both swabs by RNA sequencing demonstrated that adequate collection technique was achieved by brief instructions.
Our results support the feasibility of a scalable and convenient means for the identification of respiratory viruses and implementation in pandemic preparedness for novel respiratory pathogens.
严重急性呼吸综合征冠状病毒2（SARS-CoV-2）大流行凸显了现场样本采集并运送到诊断和公共卫生实验室的必要性。自行采集的鼻拭子在无需冷链的情况下运输，有可能消除检测的关键障碍，扩大检测能力，并减少大流行期间卫生专业人员的暴露机会。
我们比较了研究参与者在家中自行采集鼻拭子及其子女鼻拭子与由训练有素的研究人员采集鼻拭子的情况。
每位成年参与者采集1份鼻拭子，用单根拭子对双侧鼻孔进行采样，之后从1名儿童采集1份鼻拭子。在为每户家庭采集完所有参与者的样本后，研究人员从每个个体单独采集1份重复样本。样本采集后，成年参与者立即完成一份关于采样程序可接受性的问卷。将拭子置于温度稳定的保存液中，通过鸟枪法RNA测序检测呼吸道病毒，从而实现病毒基因组分析。
共有21户家庭参与了该研究，每户有1名成年人和1名儿童，共42人有配对样本。研究参与者报告自行采集是可接受的。通过RNA测序对两份拭子中鉴定出的呼吸道病毒进行比较，结果表明通过简短说明即可实现充分的采集技术。
我们的结果支持了一种可扩展且便捷的呼吸道病毒鉴定方法的可行性，并支持其在新型呼吸道病原体大流行防范中的应用。
