ABSTRACT
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.
ABSTRACT
Oxoid Brilliance MRSA Agar and bioMérieux MRSA ID medium were evaluated for their ability to identify meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in clinical samples. Nasal and throat samples (nâ=â629) were taken from veterinarians and their household members. The sensitivities of Brilliance MRSA Agar and MRSA ID medium after 20 h of incubation were 63.6 and 64.5â%, and the specificities were 94.1 and 99.4â%, respectively. After an enrichment step, the sensitivities increased to 96.3 and 97.2â%, but the specificities decreased to 88.7 and 98.5â%, respectively. Brilliance MRSA Agar and MRSA ID medium are both sensitive methods for the screening of MRSA in combination with broth enrichment, but positive results require confirmation.
