Comparison of a New Transport Medium with Universal Transport Medium at a Tropical Field Site

摘要

Limited data are available in rural Honduran settings describing the etiology of respiratory infections, partially due to limited specimen transport. A new molecular transport media (MTM) preserves released nucleic acid at ambient temperature for later detection. Prospective surveillance was conducted in a Honduran clinic to identify 233 children less than 5 years of age presenting with respiratory symptoms. We obtained two nasopharyngeal samples and stored one in PrimeStore^® MTM at room temperature and one in universal transport media (UTM) at -80° Celsius. The specimens were then transported to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and tested for 16 respiratory viruses using a multiplex PCR panel. The two specimen collection systems were similar for detecting the four most common viruses: influenza (Kappa=0.7676, p<0.0001), human metapneumovirus (Kappa=0.8770, p<0.0001), respiratory syncytial virus (Kappa=0.6849, p<0.0001), and parainfluenza (Kappa=0.8796, p<0.0001). These results suggest that clinical specimens transported via PrimeStore^® MTM and UTM yield similar viral multiplex PCR results.