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. 1988 Jul;26(7):1335–1338. doi: 10.1128/jcm.26.7.1335-1338.1988

Evaluation of several commercial biochemical and immunologic methods for rapid identification of gram-positive cocci directly from blood cultures.

T Rappaport 1, K P Sawyer 1, I Nachamkin 1
PMCID: PMC266604  PMID: 3410948

Abstract

To develop laboratory methods for the rapid identification of gram-positive cocci from blood cultures, several commercial immunological and biochemical tests for identifying staphylococci and streptococci from two different blood culture systems (Thiol/TSB, Difco Laboratories; BACTEC, Johnston Laboratories, Inc.) were evaluated and compared with conventional identification methods. A total of 44 cultures contained Staphylococcus aureus as determined by conventional methods. Commercial immunological methods (six tested) ranged in overall sensitivity from 38.6 (Staphyloslide; BBL Microbiology Systems) to 77.3% (Staphaurex; Wellcome Diagnostics). All methods tested had 100% specificity. A total of 30 isolates of group D streptococci were tested with immunological and biochemical identification systems. The overall sensitivity ranged from 14.2% (Phadebact Group D; Pharmacia Diagnostics) to 100% with Streptex (Wellcome; immunological) and Identicult A-E (Scott Laboratories, Inc.; biochemical). The results of this study suggest that some reagents can be used to provide rapid identification of gram-positive cocci from blood cultures 24 h earlier than standard methods.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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