Self-care or caregiver swabs are as effective as healthcare worker swabs for detecting pathogens

Self-swabs and caregiver swabs are effective in detecting multiple pathogens and are just as reliable as those taken by healthcare workers, according to a team of Australian researchers. The research appears in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology, a publication of the American Society for Microbiology.

Across the range of pathogens and swab types, there was high agreement between outcomes from self-care or care swabs and those performed by a health care worker, even when different sites were swabbed (e.g. nasopharyngeal vs nasal). “

Joshua Osowicki, BMedSci, MBBS, FRACP, Principal Investigator, Physician of Pediatric Infectious Diseases in the Tropical Diseases Research Group of the Murdoch Children ‘s Research Institute.

“We found an accurate sensitivity of 91% and a specificity of 98% for high airway swabs collected by themselves or carers compared to healthcare worker swabs,” the researchers wrote. (Sensitivity refers to the proportion of positives that are correctly identified, and the specificity of the proportion that makes a negative test that is correctly identified.)

“The results were similar when only SARS-CoV-2 data were evaluated,” the researchers wrote. “This level of diagnostic performance should reassure clinicians, researchers, and public health officials that diagnostic performance is virtually not compromised by self-care or care swabbing.”

Pathogens swabbed in the study include SARS-CoV-2, influenza, group A Streptococcus, Staphylococcus aureus, pharyngeal Chlamydia trachomatis and Neisseria gonorrhoeae, and a panel of respiratory viruses.

The study was a systematic review and meta-analysis of 20 previous studies involving swabs of more than 3,500 people, comparing self-care swabs or swabs with swabs collected by loaders. healthcare staff for detecting a range of high airway pathogens. “We investigated previous studies that included both types of swabs collected from the same people,” Dr. Osowicki said. “For each study, we considered the sensitivity and specificity of self-care or care swabs compared to swabs with health care workers, and the agreement between the two types of swab.

Self-care and care swabs offer several benefits of swabbing with health care workers, including less likelihood of transmission, lower costs, maintenance of personal protective equipment, and less of discomfort to patients. An online study of patients with SARS-CoV-2 symptoms found that a much higher proportion were willing to be tested through a self-collected saliva sample (92%) or nasal swab (88%) than by collection health care worker swab. (71%), “according to the researchers.

When the plans of the then medical student and first author Ciara Harrison to complete an immunology laboratory project with the pandemic, Dr. Harrison, who is now a first-year physician, , linked to this systematic review and meta-analysis.