For clinical diagnosis of enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC）, it needs to capture viable EHEC cells from stool sample in the view of medical fee points. However, there is no comprehensive solution for the detection of viable EHEC cells since there are wide variety of serotype and susceptibility against potassium tellurite which is commonly used for selective agent in selective medium for EHEC. In these background, EHEC Clear-HT System (EHEC-CHT）, a novel effective chromogenic medium system for screening comprehensive viable EHEC, was developed. When EHEC-CHT was assessed using 128 microbes including 49 clinical isolated EHEC strains, EHEC-CHT detected all 49 EHEC strains as typical blue-colored colony regardless of both serotype and susceptibility to potassium tellurite. EHEC-CHT was compared with Japanese commercially available tellurite-based EHEC selective media using 107 clinical patient stool samples. EHEC-CHT showed higher detection ratio than conventional tellurite-based selective media compared, and 7% improvement at least in detection ratio in this study.
Keywords: Enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli; chromogenic medium; clinical stool; tellurite susceptibility.