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Published on: November 7, 2020
Development and evaluation of a flocked nasal midturbinate swab for self-collection in respiratory virus infection
Marek Smieja1, Santina Castriciano, Susan Carruthers
1Department of Pathology & Molecular Medicine, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. smiejam@mcmaster.ca
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.

