Below are links to the Swab reco

Below are links to the Swab recovery Studies. You may have seen the Kings College Report (presented at AACC in 2003) before, but it is a good independent study, based on the M40 criteria, but using 30 different wild-type strains of GC, representing the kind of real-life samples a swab would have to deal with. There is another study based on M40, comparing a number of swabs sold in the UK, and a new study looking at the difference in the way organisms are released from swab buds. This is not yet formally published, but I am sure it will be of interest to your customers. It is not the first time this phenomenon has been observed. A commercial company here evaluated different swabs to see which was most suitable for an assay they were developing, and contacted us to explain why the results they obtained with our swabs were so much better than with Copan's. Interesting indeed?

Our intention is not to produce a "special swab" called M40, but to ensure that our standard product meets all the requirements of the M40 guidelines . Medical Wire was actually involved in putting together the M40 standard, and from the beginning we have taken its provisions on board. We don't see it so much as a special standard, but rather an indication of what a good transport swab should do. But M40 does provide a set of criteria against which we can measure and improve the performance of transport devices. Having been the first company to manufacture a transport swab, it's something we take seriously .

It has also been bought to our attention that using the words M40 on a swab, literature and code numbering is not allowed due to another commercial company already using such an item as a trade mark. Therefore Copan remove the wording M40 from it's swab, literature and product code.