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Updated: May 17, 2026
Biosensor for Detection of Antibiotic Resistant Staphylococcus Bacteria
Published on: May 8, 2013
Self-sampling is appropriate for detection of Staphylococcus aureus: a validation study
Brigitte Agl van Cleef1, Miranda van Rijen, Marianne Ferket
1RIVM National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Centre for Infectious Disease Control Netherlands, P,O, Box 1, 3720 BA, Bilthoven, the Netherlands. brigitte.van.cleef@rivm.nl.
Background:
Studies frequently use nasal swabs to determine Staphylococcus aureus carriage. Self-sampling would be extremely useful in an outhospital research situation, but has not been studied in a healthy population. We studied the similarity of self-samples and investigator-samples in nares and pharynxes of healthy study subjects (hospital staff) in the Netherlands.
Methods:
One hundred and five nursing personnel members were sampled 4 times in random order after viewing an instruction paper: 1) nasal self-sample, 2) pharyngeal self-sample, 3) nasal investigator-sample, and 4) pharyngeal investigator-sample.
Results:
For nasal samples, agreement is 93% with a kappa coefficient of 0.85 (95% CI 0.74-0.96), indicating excellent agreement, for pharyngeal samples agreement is 83% and the kappa coefficient is 0.60 (95% CI 0.43-0.76), indicating good agreement. In both sampling sites self-samples even detected more S. aureus than investigator-samples.
Conclusions:
This means that self-samples are appropriate for detection of Staphylococcus aureus and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.
