Clinical and Diagnostic Laboratory Immunology, Mar 1994, 145-149, Vol 1, No. 2
Copyright © 1994 by the American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
YF Liu, LC Lim, K Schell, SD Lovrich, SM Callister and RF Schell
Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene, University of Wisconsin, Madison 53706, USA.
We demonstrated that borreliacidal activity caused by immune serum and complement can easily be differentiated by flow cytometry from killing activity caused by antimicrobial agents that are commonly used for the treatment of Lyme disease. Assay suspensions containing normal or immune serum were incubated with Borrelia burgdorferi in the presence or absence of ceftriaxone, doxycycline, penicillin, and phosphomycin for 2, 8, 16, and 24 h. Samples containing killing activity were identified by using flow cytometry and acridine orange. In 30 min, the effects of immune serum and complement were easily distinguished from the killing of spirochetes by antimicrobial agents by adding fluorescein isothiocyanate-conjugated goat anti-hamster immunoglobulin. This simple procedure greatly enhanced the usefulness of the borreliacidal assay by eliminating a major source of false-positive reactions.
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