PubMed HealthSearch

Biomedical subjects

M Barnham

Publications and source records attributed to M Barnham.

10 recordsLinked to original sources

Acute peritonsillar abscess caused by Arcanobacterium haemolyticum.

A patient is reported with a peritonsillar abscess yielding Arcanobacterium haemolyticum. This appears to be only the fifth such case described in the medical literature and the first from Europe. The organism has been reported as an occasional cause of tonsillopharyngitis with rash, resembling infection with Streptococcus pyogenes but often unresponsive to penicillin therapy. A. haemolyticum easily passes unrecognized in bacteriological cultures as a result of its slow growth, coryneform appearance in the Gram's stain and weak haemolytic activity on conventional laboratory media.

Acute Disease

Identification of clinical isolates of Neisseria gonorrhoeae by a coagglutination test.

Ninety-eight per cent of laboratory isolates of Neisseria gonorrhoeae from a veneral disease clinic gave positive reactions with a gonococcal coagglutination test. The prototype reagent, however, was poor at distinguishing between different species of the genus Neisseria: 75% of strains of Neisseria meningitidis and 40% of other Neisseria species tested gave positive reactions. None of the origanisms other than Neisseria growing on the diagnostic cultures from the clinic gave positive reactions. We therefore suggest that the present reagent is unsuitable for testing isolates from the upper respiratory tract. The technique is simple, rapid, and convenient and with a more specific antibody could be useful. Results of coagglutination reactions of 126 strains of Neisseria grown on serum-containing and serum-free media were very similar and there is no need to use special serum-free media.

Agglutination Tests

A case of Bacillus cereus bacteraemia.

A case is presented of Bacillus cereus bacteraemia in a patient receiving hepatic perfusion with 5-fluorouracil (5FU) for metastasis from a carcinoma of the breast. The literature concerning systemic B. cereus infections is briefly reviewed.

Aged