A novel approach to the presumptive screening of questioned semen stains has been developed which enables the rapid identification of stains which are devoid of semen. Questioned semen stains can be swabbed with a moist cotton swab, and the prostatic acid phosphatase (SAP) activity transferred to the swab identified through assay with 5-bromo-4-chloro-3-indolyl phosphate (BCIP). Controlled labo...

TO THE EDITOR—We read with interest the recent article by Winokur et al, in which they developed a safe experimental human model of nontypeable Haemophilus influenzae (NTHi) nasopharyngeal colonization [1]. In their study, both nasopharyngeal wash specimens and nasopharyngeal swab specimens were collected to culture NTHi. Colonization was detected in nasopharyngeal wash samples from 9 subjects ...

BACKGROUND Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia (SAB) is an important infection. Methicillin-resistant S aureus (MRSA) screening is performed on hospitalized patients for infection control purposes. OBJECTIVE To assess the usefulness of past MRSA screening for guiding empirical antibiotic therapy for SAB. METHODS A retrospective cohort study examined consecutive patients with confirmed SAB and ...

Human bite mark evidence is often found in violent crimes. Due to the difficulties of physically comparing an injury site on elastic and curved skin surfaces to the teeth of a suspect, the authors have considered using salivary DNA evidence to identify the bite perpetrator. Several techniques were evaluated to determine the best method of recovering saliva from human skin before extracting geno...

After a potential biological incident the sampling strategy and sample analysis are crucial for the outcome of the investigation and identification. In this study, we have developed a simple sandwich ELISA based on commercial components to quantify BSA (used as a surrogate for ricin) with a detection range of 1.32-80 ng/mL. We used the ELISA to evaluate different protein swabbing procedures (sw...

In Australia, it is a requirement of workplace oral fluid (OF) drugs of abuse testing that drug recovery from collection devices be verified by an accredited laboratory. Recovery data are used in conjunction with collection volume imprecision data and uncertainty of measurement to provide an estimation of drug concentration in neat OF. The manufacturer's product information for the DCD5000 coll...

For radionuclides such as plutonium and americium, detection of removable activity in the nose (i.e., nasal swab measurements) are frequently used to determine whether follow-up bioassay measurements are warranted following a potential intake. For this paper, the authors analyzed 429 nasal swab measurements taken following incidents or suspicious circumstances (such as an air monitor alarming) ...

First-void urine samples collected from sexually transmitted diseases (STD) clinic patients were examined by a nested polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and a commercial enzyme immunoassay (IDEIA Chlamydia) for the diagnosis of Chlamydia trachomatis urethritis or cervicitis. The primers for the PCR amplified a target in the major outer membrane protein (MOMP) gene in C trachomatis while the IDEIA ...