Effect of high-speed centrifugation on the sensitivity of irradiated McCoy cell culture for the isolation of Chlamydia.

as well as Rickettsia prowazeki onto cell monolayers will increase the sensitivity of cell culture several fold. Using centrifugal force to facilitate the precipitation of infective particles onto irradiated McCoy cells, Gordon, Magruder, Quan, and Arm (1963) and Gordon, Dressler, and Quan (1967) developed a cell culture technique as an alternative to cultivation in the yolk sac of fertile eggs for the primary isolation of Chlamydia. This technique has been shown to be three to four times more sensitive than the isolation of Chlamydia in the yolk sac or the detection of inclusion bodies in smears (Gordon, Harper, Quan, Treharne, Dwyer, and Garland, 1969; Darougar, Treharne, Dwyer, Kinnison, and Jones, 1971). It has since been extensively used in our laboratory for the isolation of Chlamydia from the eye, genital tract, and rectum of patients in the United Kingdom (Gordon and others, 1969; Dunlop, Hare, Darougar, Jones, and Rice, 1969; Dunlop, Vaughan-Jackson, Darougar, and Jones, 1972) and from the eye in the