Immunofluorescence staining for the detection of Neisseria gonorrhoeae in women.

Although the use of a fluorescent antibody (FA) staining technique to demonstrate N. gonorrhoeae in secretions from patients with gonorrhoea was first described as long ago as 1959 by Deacon, Peacock, Freeman, and Harris, it does not seem to have gained wide acceptance in routine diagnosis. In our laboratory direct and delayed FA methods were first assessed in 1963 (Fry and Wilkinson, 1964). In women the direct method gave more positive results than the delayed which gave slightly more positives than Gram-stained smears or cu]tures on a nonselective medium; it was possible to demonstrate gonococci by the delayed FA method when the organism was overgrown by Proteus on conventional culture plates. Lucas, Price, Thayer, and Schroeter (1967) obtained a similar number of positives in females with the delayed FA method to that with cultures on Thayer-Martin medium. Lind (1969) also obtained a close correlation in both males and females between the delayed FA test and culture on a selective medium, although in a previous study of specimens from females (Lind, 1967) the delayed FA method was superior to culture on a non-selective medium; in the latter study the direct FA method did not offer any advantage over Gram-stained smears. Thin, Williams, and Nicol (1971) found that, in the examination of cervical and urethral specimens from women, direct as well as delayed FA tests gave more positive results than Gram-stained smears or cultures ; however, they point out that selective media were not used, and when the plates had only a few colonies after 16 to 24 hrs' incubation all the material may have been removed for the delayed FA test. On the other hand, Martin, Peacock, and Thayer (1965), testing women, found the delayed FA method inferior to cultures on both selective and nonselective media. McGill, Moffett, Masterton, and