Respiratory tract infections in children, such as coughs, colds and flu, and more recently, COVID-19, are some of the most common illnesses treated in primary care.

 

The study, which was conducted before the COVID-19 pandemic, compared the quality and performance of parent-collected nose and saliva swab samples with nurse-collected samples. Over 300 parents and 485 children aged around five years in the Bristol area took part.

 

Both parent-collected and nurse-collected samples were sent to a clinical testing laboratory for the detection of over 40 common respiratory pathogens. While parent-collected nose swabs performed well compared to those collected by nurses (91.6 per cent inter-rater agreement for viral infections and 91.4 per cent inter-rater agreement for bacterial infections), parent-collected saliva swabs did not perform as well (69 per cent and 78.1 per cent for viral and bacterial infections respectively).

 

Lead author of the study, Dr Claire Woodall, Research Associate in Primary Care Infectious Diseases Epidemiology at the Centre for Academic Primary Care, and Elizabeth Blackwell Institute/Daphne Jackson Fellow, said: “If a parent is worried about collecting a nose swab from their child for laboratory analysis of coronavirus or any other common respiratory pathogen – my response would be that they should have the confidence to do so. In fact, our study showed that parents collected a higher number of human cells on the nose swabs compared to the nurses, which suggests that children are more tolerant of a parent performing the swabbing technique.”

 

The research was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Protection Research Unit in Behavioural Science and Evaluation at University of Bristol, the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the Elizabeth Blackwell Institute via the Wellcome Trust Institutional Strategic Support Fund, in collaboration with the Daphne Jackson Trust