Collection of non-meconium stool on fecal occult blood cards is an effective method for fecal microbiota studies in infants

Table 5 Estimation of reproducibility as measured by intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) in the stool samples

	All	Tube	Card	Card 7 days RT vs. tube 7 days, − 80 °C	Card 7 days RT vs. tube 0–2 days	Card 7 days, − 80 °C vs. tube 7 days, − 80 °C
Observed species	0.71	0.74	0.75	0.75	0.72	0.87
Shannon	0.74	0.96	0.71	0.75	0.78	0.92
Simpson	0.61	0.92	0.70	0.45	0.40	0.82
Fisher	0.70	0.72	0.74	0.73	0.69	0.86
PCoA1^a	0.87	0.85	0.88	0.90	0.90	0.90
Firmicutes	0.51	0.38	0.87	0.60	0.09	0.72
Proteobacteria	0.53	0.39	0.88	0.62	0.13	0.73
Esherichia	0.80	1.00	0.84	0.72	0.71	0.92
Haemophilus	0.67	0.92	0.82	0.79	0.64	0.75

The “All” column measures the reproducibility of sample measures using all storage conditions. The “Tube” column measures the reproducibility of sample measures using the tube storage method with different lengths of time and temperatures. The “Card” column measures the reproducibility of sample measures using the card storage method with different lengths of time and temperatures. The last column shows the reproducibility measured by ICC between the same samples stored with cards at room temperature for 7 days compared with those stored with tubes at − 80C for 7 days
^aFirst component from PCoA analysis based on unweighted UniFrac distance

ISSN: 2049-2618