Sphingolipids (SLs) are essential structural components of mammalian cell membranes. Our group recently determined that the oral anaerobe Porphyromonas gingivalis delivers its SLs to host cells and ability P. synthesize limits elicited inflammatory response during cellular infection.

Yesair's pork infusion medium, as modified by Wynne and Foster (1948), has been extensively employed in thermal resistance studies of spores of Clostridium species. While this medium is excellent for the recovery of spores of these organisms, it is expensive and laborious to prepare. Recent unpublished data in this laboratory have demonstrated that counts of heat-activated spores of Putrefactiv...

Frozen microtitration trays manufactured by Micro-Media Systems (MMS) for antimicrobial testing of anaerobic bacteria were evaluated and compared with the broth disk elution method of Virginia Polytechnic Institute (VPI) described by Wilkins and Thiel. A total of 224 clinical anaerobic isolates were tested. Susceptibility results were compared for carbenicillin, cefoxitin, chloramphenicol, clin...

The API ZYM system was compared with four anaerobe identification systems for the definitive identification of Clostridium difficile by using 88 cultures of C. difficile grown on Mueller-Hinton blood agar medium. The API ZYM system yielded a distinct and consistent enzyme profile for all test strains, whereas the sensitivities of the other systems in identifying C. difficile ranged from 78 to 9...

Two commercial agar media for the cultivation of anaerobes were compared with four other media for their ability to support the growth of a wide range of anaerobes from clinical specimens of subgingival plaque. Fastidious anaerobe agar (FAA, Lab M) and anaerobe agar (GAA, Gibco) allowed better growth of the pure cultures than the other media. FAA recovered the highest numbers of bacteria from s...

Listeria monocytogenes (LM) is a motile Gram-positive facultative anaerobe, which primarily transmitted to humans through consumption of contaminated food. Examples include ready-to-eat meals, dairy products like milk and soft cheeses, cold meats vegetables. In pregnant women, illness caused by LM infection, listeriosis, may occur asymptomatically or it present with vague flu-like and/or gastro...