Acceptability and feasibility of recruiting women to collect a self-administered vaginal swab at a pharmacy clinic for sexually transmissible infection screening
Gaydos et al.
The finding, in our words
Self-collection of vaginal swabs at a pharmacy clinic proved feasible, with 40 percent of approached women consenting, and highly acceptable, as 95 percent reported feeling comfortable with the process. The approach identified a 3.9 percent sexually transmitted infection prevalence among participants.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
A study of 2500 women found 99.0% agreement between first-void urine and vaginal self-sampling for HPV detection using Cobas4800, with 98.1% of participants preferring urine. Although conducted in a resource-limited setting which may limit generalisability, these results support urine as a viable sample type for decentralised, patient-centric screening.
First-void urine and self-collected vaginal swabs showed similar sensitivity and specificity to clinician-collected cervical samples for high-risk HPV detection across two real-time PCR assays, supporting their use as decentralised, patient-collected alternatives; most women preferred first-void urine for regular cervical screening.
A et al., Journal of gynecologic oncology (paywalled) · source ↗
This randomised sub-study found return rates of 10.4% for Colli-Pee, 10.1% for FLOQSwabs and 7.4% for Evalyn-Brush. All devices yielded sufficient DNA with low invalid rates, but the authors noted the study was limited by low overall participation.
Hempel et al., Archives of gynecology and obstetrics · source ↗
Self-sampling for HPV testing using urine and swab devices achieved high DNA detection rates, 92.1-99.7%, and very high participant acceptance, 99.1%, in a primary care population, supporting decentralised screening in low-resource settings.
Community pharmacy-based testing and treatment for chlamydia and gonorrhoea using self-collected first-catch urine was highly acceptable to users and successfully identified new cases, with pharmacists efficiently prescribing antibiotic treatment. This supports decentralised sampling by showing that asymptomatic STI testing can be delivered through self-collection in non-clinical settings with good uptake and patient satisfaction.
d'Entremont-Harris et al., Journal of the American Pharmacists Association : JAPhA (paywalled) · source ↗