A commercially available latex agglutination test for Clostridium difficile was compared with a cell culture cytotoxin assay and bacteriological culture for the laboratory diagnosis of C. difficile-associated diarrhea and colitis (CAD). Stool specimens from 626 patients were tested by the three methods, and specimens from 118 patients (19%) were positive by at least one of the methods. The resu...

Standard cell culture and centrifugation culture were compared for the isolation of varicella-zoster virus from 337 clinical specimens. Of a total of 85 (25%) positive specimens, 67 (78.8%) were positive by centrifugation culture alone and 18 (21.2%) were positive by both methods. When epithelial cells from the specimen were included in the vial inoculum, these cells stained positive and increa...

Background/objective: Neonatal septicemia is one of the major causes of mortality in newborns. The aim of this study is to evaluate the clinical manifestations and laboratory findings in positive blood culture in neonatal septicemia. Methods: In this retrospective study, we allocated 100 records positive blood culture of neonates suffering from septicemia. A questionnaire was completed for each...

The Clearview Chlamydia assay (Wampole Laboratories, Cranbury, N.J.), the PACE 2 DNA probe assay (GenProbe, San Diego, Calif.), and culture were compared for their abilities to detect Chlamydia trachomatis from cervical specimens in a population with a low prevalence (3.9%) of chlamydial infections. A consensus reference method was used. The consensus reference method defined a positive specime...

A conventional PCR and a real-time PCR for detecting Bacteroides fragilis were evaluated against clinical specimens. Analytical sensitivities were 100 and 40 fg of DNA, respectively. Detection limits were 100 and 10 CFU/ml, respectively. A total of six culture-negative specimens were positive by PCR. Altering the gold standard from "positive culture" to "positive culture or both PCR assays posi...