Effectiveness of Self-Collected, Ambient Temperature-Preserved Nasal Swabs Compared to Samples Collected by Trained Staff for Genotyping of Respiratory Viruses by Shotgun RNA Sequencing: Comparative Study

• Published in: JMIR formative research 2023-11, Vol.7, p.e32848-e32848
• Main Authors: Soto, Raymond, Paul, Litty, Porucznik, Christina A, Xie, Heng, Stinnett, Rita Czako, Briggs, Benjamin, Biggerstaff, Matthew, Stanford, Joseph, Schlaberg, Robert
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adults; Children & youth; Demographics; Enrollments; Epidemics; Ethnicity; Families & family life; Females; Genomes; Hispanic Americans; Households; Infections; Influenza; Medical diagnosis; Original Paper; Pathogens; Public health; Questionnaires; Respiratory diseases; Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2; Testing laboratories; Viral infections
• ISSN: 2561-326X; 2561-326X
• 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.