Comparison of the New Starplex Starplex StarSwab II TM and the New Copan Vi-Pak Amies Agar Gel Collection and Transport Swabs with BBL TM Port-A-Cul TM for the Maintenance of Anaerobic and Fastidious Aerobic Organisms
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Of utmost importance when evaluating patient clinical samples for infectious agents is specimen transport to the clinical laboratory in as near its original state as possible. In this study we compared Starplex StarSwab II™ (Starplex Scientific, Ontario, Canada), and Copan V-Pak Amies Agar Gel transport swabs (Copan Diagnostics Inc., Corona, California) to BBL™ Port-A-Cul™ (Becton Dickinson Microbiology Systems, Sparks, Maryland) for the survival of anaerobic and fastidious aerobic bacteria. The Copan Vi-Pak system has been modified by nitrogen gas flushing to keep an ideal low Eh condition, and to prevent oxidation of the transport media. The survival of 13 different microorganisms (9 anaerobic [Clostridium perfringens, Peptostreptococcus anaerobius, Propioniobacterium acnes, Eubacterium lentum, Prevotella bivia, Prevotella melaninogenica, Bacteroides fragilis, Fusobacterium nucleatum, and Fusobacterium necrophorum] and 4 aerobic [Haemophilus influenzae, Streptococcus milleri, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, and Streptococcus pneumoniae ]) at 0, 6, 24, and 48 hours post inoculation and storage at room temperature was evaluated. Serial dilutions were used to quantify the number of viable organisms on sheep blood agar or chocolate plates. The recovery of all organisms by the three swabs was similar at time point 0. However, Copan Vi-Pak Amies Agar Gel transport out-performed the two other transport swabs after the 0-hour time point. While there was no dramatic reduction in the number of viable organisms in the Copan Vi-Pak system after 6 h incubation, a 2-4 log 10 reduction was observed for P. anaerobius, P. bivia, F. nucleatum, and F. necrophorum after 6 & 24 hours incubation in the other two swab systems’ transport media. Moreover, Copan Vi-Pak system maintained the viability of H. influenzae and N. gonorrhoeae organisms for up to 24‐48 hours whereas there was a 3‐5 log 10 reduction using the two other swabs. In conclusion, Copan Vi-Pak system out-performed the two other swabs evaluated by maintaining the viability of both anaerobic and fastidious aerobic organisms for a time period long enough to transport the specimens to the clinical microbiology laboratory or to an off-site reference laboratory.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".