Recently, we observed that Staphylococcus aureus strains newly isolated from patients had twofold-higher aconitase activity than a strain passaged extensively in vitro, leading us to hypothesize that aconitase specific activity decreases over time during in vitro passage. To test this hypothesis, a strain recovered from a patient with toxic shock syndrome was serially passaged for 6 weeks, and ...

Varicella is generally a benign, self-limited childhood illness; however, severe, life-threatening complications do occur. A live, attenuated vaccine exists to prevent this illness, but controversy remains concerning the need to vaccinate children for what is generally a benign, self-limited disease, although more states are currently recommending this vaccine. We report a previously healthy 3-...

Jablon, James M. (National Children's Cardiac Hospital, Miami, Fla.), Betty Brust, and Milton S. Saslaw. beta-Hemolytic streptococci with group A and type II carbohydrate antigens. J. Bacteriol. 89:529-534. 1965.-Ten strains of beta-hemolytic streptococci with unusual somatic antigens were isolated from excised tonsils or throat cultures or both. Acid extracts of these strains reacted with comm...

Covalently closed circular deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) molecules were isolated by cesium chloride centrifugation in the presence of ethidium bromide from a naturally occurring beta-hemolytic Escherichia coli strain (SC52). The open circular forms have contour lengths of 2.25 +/- 0.1 mum, 24.0 +/- 0.3 mum, and 29.5 +/- 0.5 mum. The beta-hemolytic character of E. coli SC52 can be transferred by c...

It is our opinion that this medium is useful for rapid isolation and identification of group A streptococci. If it is not possible to test betahemolytic colonies by the precipitin test, it is obvious from our results that one can assume with a fair degree of certainty that the growth is group A streptococci. Beta-hemolytic streptococci other than group A numbered only 7.0% in the present series...

Staphylococci isolated from 98 mastitic cow’s milk samples were analyzed for the production of alpha,beta and delta-hemolysin on sheep, bovine and horse red blood cells and in vitro susceptibility to several antimicrobial agents. Out of a total of 18 isolated strains, 100% demonstrated hemolytic activity either alone or in combined forms. Among 8 isolates of S. aureus 3 isolates produced α/β an...

Alpha-hemolytic-like activity from Campylobacter jejuni was clearly apparent when the medium pH ranged from 6.0 to 6.5, but the hemolytic zones disappeared when the pH of the medium increased. Beta-hemolytic-like activity just beneath the bacterial growth appeared after prolonged incubation. The hemolytic activity was not influenced by the species of blood.

A new selective group A streptococcus agar (ssA) (BBL Microbiology Systems, Cockeysville, Md.) was evaluated for the recovery and direct plate identification of group A beta-hemolytic streptococci (GABHS) in comparison with sheep blood agar (SBA). A total of 265 GABHS were recovered from 1,116 throat swab specimens on both media, with detection rates of 98.9 and 91.7% for ssA and SBA, respectiv...