Impact of freezing on the future utility of archived surveillance culture specimens.
The ability to recover bacteria from frozen culture specimens has important implications. The purpose of this study was to validate the utility of frozen specimens for recovery of several gram-positive and gram-negative bacterial species by culture. Results demonstrate that 98% of 250 bacterial isolates identified on initial culture were subsequently recovered by culture of frozen specimens after a median storage period of 564 days.
Green
Heather P
HP
Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland 21201, USA.
Johnson
Judith A
JA
Furuno
Jon P
JP
Strauss
Sandra M
SM
Perencevich
Eli N
EN
Lautenbach
Ebbing
E
Lee
Dong
D
Harris
Anthony D
AD
D001431:Bacteriological Techniques; D005615:Freezing; D006090:Gram-Negative Bacteria / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D016905:Gram-Negative Bacterial Infections / Q000382:microbiology*; D006094:Gram-Positive Bacteria / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D016908:Gram-Positive Bacterial Infections / Q000382:microbiology*; D006095:Gram-Positive Cocci / Q000302:isolation & purification; D016106:Methicillin Resistance; D017817:Nasal Lavage Fluid / Q000382:microbiology; D012007:Rectum / Q000382:microbiology; D018571:Sentinel Surveillance; D020713:Vancomycin Resistance; D018440:beta-Lactam Resistance