A comparison of cotton-tipped and nylon flocked swabs for culture of Neisseria gonorrhoeae from oropharyngeal samples

Authors:

• Phillips, Tiffany R.
• Tabesh, Marjan
• Fairley, Christopher K.
• Maddaford, Kate
• Pasricha, Shivani
• Wigan, Rebecca
• De Petra, Vesna
• Williamson, Deborah A.
• Chow, Eric P.F.

Details:

Diagnostic Microbiology and Infectious Disease, Volume 101, Issue 3, 2021-11-30

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Our aim was to determine if there was a difference in culture positivity for oropharyngeal gonorrhoea when sampling using a nylon-flocked versus cotton-tipped swab. We collected FLOQSwabs and cotton-tipped swabs from individuals aged ≥ 18 years who had untreated oropharyngeal gonorrhoea detected by NAAT between November 2019-June 2020.Of 78 participants, 32 (41.0%) were culture-positive for N. gonorrhoeae from either swab. Of these 32, 29 (90.6%, 95%CI: 75.0%-98.0%) were positive on both swabs, one (3.1%, 95%CI: 0.0%-16.2%) tested positive on FLOQSwab only and two (6.2%, 95%CI: 0.1%-20.8%) tested positive on cotton-tipped swabs only. There was moderate agreement between the swabs in the amount of bacterial growth (Cohen's Kappa (k)=0.745; 95%CI: 0.622-0.868, p<0.001). Our results showed that the proportion of positive results was comparable using the FLOQSwabs versus the cotton-tipped swabs for oropharyngeal gonorrhoea culture.