I'm trying to perform a vaginal smear from female rat but I couldn't get any vaginal secretions, I insert 100ul saline and withdraw it a gain from the vagina but no cells are found in the smear
Look at some of Dr. Papanicolaou's works. That's how he did his original work that led to the Pap test. You have to do scrape or swab, not a wash.
Dr. Papanicolaou used guinea pigs, but the same techniques should apply.
Hi Lamiaa,
Did you find a good way to get vaginal secretions at each of your smears? I currently do it on anesthetized rats since I'm not comfortable to restraint them. I also insert some physiological serum through a Pasteur pipette but don't manage to obtain what I want at every trials (I want to validate a gestation by looking at the presence of spermatozoides).
Try a swab that is not cotton tipped. Tried swapping with out the sailing.
Thank you for your response Sonya Naryshkin. I did it also with a swab that was cotton tipped. What type of swab do you recommend ? And you just spread out what you collected on a slide alright ? No need to add saline solution, I will be able to see spermatozoides.?
Could you do it with a wooden applicator? That works for Pap tests on women. For some reason, Cotton swabs seem to be poor collection instruments for cells and even sometimes micro organisms. I think the fibers trap the cells.How about with the other end of a cotton swab the long thin wooden end?
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