Nasal swabs for detection of respiratory syncytial virus RNA.

摘要

Nasal swabs offer a sensitive sampling method for the detection of respiratory viruses in children. Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is an exception and it is detected more often in nasopharyngeal aspirates (NPA) than in nasal swabs when it is searched for using immu-noassays or viral culture. Therefore, more laborious and painful NPA have been the first-choice specimen for high-yield recovery of RSV by conventional methods. We wanted to examine whether the use of reverse transcrip-tion-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) increases the usefulness of nasal swabs by comparing the performance of nasal swab-RT-PCR with NPA-immunoassays in the detection of RSV infections in children.