The correlation between culture of the nasopharyngeal swab, the nose swab, swab from a handkerchief and a handkerchief directly in children with an upper respiratory tract infection

The nasopharyngeal swab is the gold standard for culturing pathogens involved
in upper respiratory tract infections. Since children may experience this
method as unpleasant (especially when performed repeatedly), we will study the
accuracy of alternative culturing methods. We hope that the results of this
study will allow us to replace the nasopharyngeal culture by one of the less
unpleasant alternatives.

The objective is determine the correlation between the outcome of the cultures
of the nasopharyngeal swab, the nose swab, the swab from a handkerchief and the
handkerchief.

A cross sectional study, during 6 months. The culture methods in randomized
order are: 1. nasal swab, 2. blowing/whiping the nose, swab of the handkerchief
3. blowing/whiping of the nose, culture form handkerchief directly, 4.
nasopharyngeal swab. Bacterial cultures for S. pneumoniae (including
serotyping), H. influenzae, M. catarrhalis and S.aureus will be performed.
Parents will fill in a short questionnaire and an observational Visual Analogue
Scale.

We believe that the risk of this study is negligible, for the gold standard is
generally accepted as safe and we plan on testing additional and even less
unpleasant methods in parallel. The nasopharyngeal swab can give an unpleasant
tickly feeling, cough and watery eyes. In rare cases a nose bleed can occur.
Especially when the nasopharyngeal swab is taken repeatedly, the child may find
this unpleasant. For this study only one nasopharyngeal swab has to be taken.
This study is necessary to be able to replace the nasopharyngeal swab in the
future for a reliable and well accepted test.