title: Assessment of swab transport systems for aerobic and anaerobic organism recovery.
abstract: Saline suspensions of 11 aerobes and anaerobes were used to inoculate swabs from Port-A-Cul (Becton Dickinson), Culturette EZ (Becton Dickinson), and Copan Amies gel (Copan Diagnostics). Swabs were removed from transport devices at 0, 24, and 48 h postinoculation and then extracted by vortexing in 1.0 ml of saline, and organism survival was determined by quantitative plate counts. For the organisms tested, Culturette EZ allowed < 1% of the original inocula to be recovered after 24 h. Port-A-Cul was only slightly better. Recovery was best with the Copan gel-containing system. Agar gel swab systems may be useful for multipurpose transport devices.
authors.affiliation: Microbiology Section, Department of Veterans Affair Medical Center, Wichita, Kansas 67218, USA.
authors.forename: J L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Perry
mesh_terms: D000332:Aerobiosis; D000362:Agar; D000693:Anaerobiosis; D018407:Bacterial Physiological Phenomena; D018929:Cell Culture Techniques / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods
chemical_list: D000362:Agar