Hi Jahzeel Lariosa

Rectal swabs are recently being assessed for its microbiome. However there are a few limitations due to limited number of available literature and:

* The bacterial density of rectal swabs is highly variable.

* Among patients, the microbiome density is associated with clinical exposures (drugs and antibiotics) and independently predicts infection risk.

* Bacterial density is an important and under-studied feature of gut microbiome community analysis.

Similarly, another recent paper concludes that rectal swabs are shown to be a valid and convenient modality for microbiome analysis.

You can check both the papers.

Ref: Article The bacterial density of clinical rectal swabs is highly var...

Article Rectal swabs are a reliable method of assessing the colonic microbiome

Thanks

Samir Ranjan