Effective culture of Clostridium difficile, such as that provided by bioMérieux's ready-to-use chromID C. difficile medium, may offer advantages over the current glutamate dehydrogenase (GDH) and enzyme immunoassay (EIA) toxin tests, as well as have the potential to save time and reduce screening costs.
chromID C. difficile is the first chromogenic medium to offer culture, isolation and
identification of the microorganism in just 24 hours, generating excellent, rapid culture results at 24 hours incubation, without the use of alcohol shock pretreatment. The black, dark grey or grey colonies produced show excellent contrast with the pale agar, enabling positive results to be identified easily at a glance. Furthermore, the medium has been shown to be up to 30% more sensitive than conventional culture media.
Helen Plumb, microbiology laboratory manager at Torbay Hospital, said: "Compared to traditional culture media, chromogenic media offer the laboratory an easier method of identifying bacteria through colour differentiation, as the intensity and specificity of the colours produced enable rapid identification of bacterial colonies. Our chromID C. difficile agar is a highly selective medium that uses a patented chromogenic substrate and a mixture of antibiotics to provide results in just 24 hours."
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