In this study we report the isolation and characterization of normal-sized and small-colony variants of Enterococcus faecalis from outbreaks of amyloid arthropathy in chickens. Postmortem examinations of 59 chickens revealed orange deposits in the knee joints, typical for amyloid arthropathy. Bacterial cultures from 102 joints and 43 spleens exhibited pure (n = 88) and mixed (n = 11) cultures o...

We describe the first known case of a fatal infection with small colony variants of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in a patient with AIDS. Recovered from three blood cultures as well as from a deep hip abscess, these variants may have resulted from long-term antimicrobial therapy with trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole for prophylaxis of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia.

To evaluate different methods for their abilities to detect methicillin resistance in small-colony variants (SCVs) of Staphylococcus aureus, 11 different methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) clones with the SCV phenotype were used in this study. The slow growth of SCVs often makes testing by disk diffusion or by automated methods invalid. Only detection of the mecA gene by PCR and the MRSA-Sc...

were measured on nutrient agar plates. In all three species, 0.1, 0.5, and 1.0% lithium chloride progressively increased the colony sizes. On the other hand, 2.0, 3.5, and 5.0% LiCl progressively reduced the colony diameters, resulting in the isolation of predominantly small-colony variants (Table 1). It is probable that the higher concentrations of LiCl selected small-colony variants from the ...