Because patients without MRSA by culture could be either colonized with methicillin-sensitive S. aureus (MSSA) or not colonized by S. aureus, DNA prepared from nasal swabs was subjected to S. aureus-specific femA gene PCR [30] to detect all S. aureus (i.e., MSSA and MRSA).
In sentinel hospital and laboratory-based surveillance, 3,526 pharyngeal swab specimens were subjected to PCR.
Briefly, nasal swab samples were subjected to vortexing for 30 s and incubated at 21°C for 5 min to permit the complete dissociation of nucleoprotein complexes.
Additionally, DNA preparations from the mangabey's skin and throat swab specimens were subjected directly to an Illumina HiSeq 1500 (San Diego, CA, USA), sequencing 150 + 150 bases (paired end).
Throat, rectal swab and cerebrospinal fluid samples were subjected to viral isolation and viral isolates were identified by immunofluorescence, micro-neutralisation using human rhabdomyosarcoma (RD) cells, and reverse transcritpase polymerase chain reaction.
All rabbits were subjected to ocular swabs peri-mortem to ensure that we could detect no spontaneous shedding of infectious virus prior to the onset of the experiment.
Simultaneously, 60 of these animals were randomly selected and 100 cm surface areas of their offal (livers, tongues, and omasum) and carcasses were swabbed, thereby being subjected to the detection procedure of STEC O157 as well.
Additionally, swabs were taken from subjects' hands and surfaces and samples were idntified using molecular identification techniques.
In the period March-April 2010, 879 nasal swabs were taken from subjects at admission to a local hospital serving an area of the Lombardy Region devoted to agriculture and farming.
Cases of influenza like illness (defined as fever (oral temperature ≥37.8°C) plus cough and/or sore throat) were identified both by active (biweekly phone contact) and passive (self reporting) surveillance and nasal and throat swabs were collected from subjects for viral culture.
Our study found that recovery was most efficient when macrofoam or cotton swabs were moistened before sampling and subjected to vortex extraction.
