Australia Centre for Research on Separation Science, School of Natural Sciences, University of Tasmania, Australia.
Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture, University of Tasmania, Australia.
J Microbiol Methods. 2024 Jan;216:106866. doi: 10.1016/j.mimet.2023.106866. Epub 2023 Nov 29.
Safety and the quality of products rely on proper cleanliness procedures and good manufacturing practices in the production environment. The use of swabs for the collection of samples from surfaces has been a common practice in industries, medicine and forensic studies. To accommodate these different purposes, many varieties of swabs have been introduced into the market, and it is important to assess the performance of these swabs before incorporating into an environmental monitoring procedure. The overall effectiveness of a swab is determined by two factors: the number of bacteria that a swab can uptake from a surface and the number of picked-up bacteria the swab can elute into a releasing buffer. This study evaluated the uptake efficiency and release efficiency of four different commercially available swabs: CleanFoam (Texwipes, USA), FLOQSwabs (Copan diagnostic Inc., USA), Hydraflock swabs (Puritan medical products, USA), and Cotton swabs. Cotton swabs showed the highest uptake efficiency (96.5 ± 1.9%), whereas CleanFoam swabs (57.9 ± 20.3%) showed the least. Both flocked (FLOQSwabs and Hydraflock) swabs showed over 80% uptake efficiency. Releasing efficiency of swabs was tested with eight different releasing buffers. Cotton swabs displayed the lowest release efficiency with most of the tested releasing buffers. When employed with Tris HEPES, Tris MOPS, Tris TAPS, FLOQSwabs, and Hydraflock swabs exhibited releasing efficiency of over 75%. The overall efficiency of the swabs was determined using TAPS as the releasing buffer and the values obtained were 80.4 ± 9.8%, 54.7 ± 16.9%, 35.0 ± 12.7% and 25.2 ± 6.9% for Hydraflock swabs, FLOQSwabs, Cotton swabs and Cleanfoam swabs, respectively.
产品的安全性和质量依赖于生产环境中的适当清洁程序和良好的生产规范。在工业、医学和法医学研究中，使用拭子从表面采集样本已经是一种常见做法。为了适应这些不同的目的，市场上已经推出了许多种类的拭子，在将其纳入环境监测程序之前，评估这些拭子的性能非常重要。拭子的整体效果取决于两个因素：拭子从表面采集的细菌数量以及拭子可以洗脱到释放缓冲液中的采集细菌数量。本研究评估了四种市售拭子的摄取效率和洗脱效率：CleanFoam（Texwipes，美国）、FLOQSwabs（Copan diagnostic Inc.，美国）、Hydraflock 拭子（Puritan medical products，美国）和棉签。棉签显示出最高的摄取效率（96.5±1.9%），而 CleanFoam 拭子（57.9±20.3%）显示出最低的摄取效率。两种植绒（FLOQSwabs 和 Hydraflock）拭子均显示出超过 80%的摄取效率。拭子的洗脱效率用八种不同的洗脱缓冲液进行测试。棉签与大多数测试的洗脱缓冲液一起显示出最低的洗脱效率。当与 Tris HEPES、Tris MOPS、Tris TAPS、FLOQSwabs 和 Hydraflock 拭子一起使用时，洗脱效率超过 75%。使用 TAPS 作为洗脱缓冲液时，拭子的整体效率被确定，获得的值分别为 Hydraflock 拭子 80.4±9.8%、FLOQSwabs 54.7±16.9%、Cotton swabs 35.0±12.7%和 Cleanfoam swabs 25.2±6.9%。
