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. 2011 Jun;49(6):2166-8.
doi: 10.1128/JCM.00350-11. Epub 2011 Apr 13.

Improving the yield of blood cultures from patients with early Lyme disease

Dionysios Liveris  1 , Ira Schwartz, Susan Bittker, Denise Cooper, Radha Iyer, Mary E Cox, Gary P Wormser
Affiliations

Improving the yield of blood cultures from patients with early Lyme disease

Dionysios Liveris et al. J Clin Microbiol. 2011 Jun.

Abstract

Approximately 45% of untreated United States patients with early Lyme disease associated with erythema migrans have a positive blood culture based on microscopic detection of Borrelia burgdorferi in Barbour-Stoenner-Kelly medium after 2 to 12 weeks of incubation. In this study we demonstrate that the yield of blood cultures can be significantly increased to 70.8% by the use of a combined culture-quantitative PCR technique and that among those patients found to have a positive blood culture, positivity was detected in over 90% within just 7 days of incubation. Patients with multiple erythema migrans were almost uniformly culture positive by this technique.

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Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
A total of 46 patients had a positive qPCR of an aliquot of culture supernatant. For these 46 patients the percentage with a positive qPCR test (y axis) is shown in relation to the duration of incubation of the culture (x axis) at the time of first detection of qPCR positivity.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
A total of 30 patients had a positive blood culture based on microscopic detection of spirochetes in culture medium. The percentage of patients with a positive blood culture based on microscopic detection (y axis) is shown in relation to the duration of incubation of the culture (x axis) at the time of detection.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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