A method of processing nasopharyngeal swabs to enable multiple testing

To develop a method to perform multiple tests on a single nasopharyngeal (NP) swab. We collected a NP swab on children aged 2–12 years with acute sinusitis and processed it for bacterial culture, viruses, cytokine expression, and 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequencing analysis. During the course of the study, we expand the scope of evaluation to include RNA-sequencing, which we accomplished by cutting the tip of the swab. Of the 174 children...