title: Yield of large-volume blood cultures in patients with early Lyme disease.
abstract: To improve yield, 6 3-mL plasma cultures (18 mL total) were established for adult patients with early Lyme disease associated with erythema migrans. Borrelia burgdorferi was recovered from the blood of 22 (44.0%) of 50 evaluable patients. The recovery rate per plasma culture and the frequency of positive results for plasma cultures for individual patients were consistent with a level of spirochetemia of approximately 0.1 cultivable cell/mL of whole blood. Our findings suggest that, if further improvements in the yield of blood cultures are possible, they probably will depend on enhancing the sensitivity of the culture method rather than increasing the volume of material cultured.
authors.affiliation: Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, New York Medical College, Valhalla, New York, NY, USA.
authors.forename: G P
authors.initials: GP
authors.lastname: Wormser
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Bittker
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Cooper
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Nowakowski
authors.forename: R B
authors.initials: RB
authors.lastname: Nadelman
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Pavia
mesh_terms: D016470:Bacteremia / Q000097:blood; D001800:Blood Specimen Collection / Q000379:methods; D025065:Borrelia burgdorferi / Q000145:classification / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D006801:Humans; D008193:Lyme Disease / Q000097:blood* / Q000382:microbiology