Finally, males provided a urine specimen and women provided two vaginal swab specimens that were assayed for three STDs and HIV testing.
The vulvovaginal swabs and endocervical samples were assayed according to the manufacturer's instructions (Gen-Probe, San Diego CA, USA).
HPV was assayed from oral and anal swabs.
On day 3, post administration oropharyngeal and cloacal swabs were collected from each chicken and virus replication was assayed by a TCID50 assay on Vero cells.
Wetted cotton swabs were not included in enzyme assays.
Having established a robust molecular detection assay, faecal swabs were collected from 26 PCR-confirmed BU patients (age range 2 37 years, 17 male subjects & 9 female subjects) and 31 healthy household contacts (age range 3 82 years, 13 male subjects & 18 female subjects) (Tables 1, 2).
We used two different diagnostic tests to detect gonorrhoea; the urethra and endocervix were analysed by culture, and the vulvovaginal and endocervical swabs were analysed by the AC2 assay.
The processing and testing of nasopharyngeal swabs were described elsewhere and included individual PCR assays for each pathogen and viral isolation for some viruses [23].
Vulvovaginal swabs and endocervical swabs were analysed by the Aptima Combo 2 (assayassay; positive results from this assay were confirmed with a second nucleic acid amplification test.
Representative tracheal and cloacal swabs were chosen to run an EID50 assay for comparison and virus titers were determine by the method of Reed and Meunch [52].
