The study, which was conducted before the COVID-19 pandemic, compared the quality and performance of parent-collected nose and saliva swab samples with nurse-collected samples. Both parent-collected and nurse-collected samples were sent to a clinical testing laboratory for the detection of over 40 common respiratory pathogens. While parent-collected nose swabs performed well compared to those collected by nurses (91.6% inter-rater agreement for viral infections and 91.4% inter-rater agreement for bacterial infections), parent-collected saliva swabs did not perform as well (69% and 78.1% for viral and bacterial infections respectively).
The study shows that it is possible for parents to collect good quality nose swab samples from children. Given the widespread use of nasal swabbing throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, this study has highlighted the suitability, benefits and convenience of parent-collected swabs for subsequent identification of respiratory microbes.
Paper: ‘Performance of parent-collected nasal and saliva swabs compared with nurse-collected swabs for the molecular detection of respiratory microorganisms: a prospective study’ by Claire Woodall, Alastair Hay et al. in Microbiology Spectrum