Description

INTENDED USE

Columbia Agar Base, without or with the addition of 5% (or 10%) sheep blood, is a highly nutritious, general-purpose medium for the isolation and cultivation of nonfastidious and fastidious microorganisms from a variety of clinical and nonclinical materials.

Columbia Agar Base is utilized as the base for media containing blood and for selective media formulations in which various combinations of antimicrobial agents are used as additives.

SUMMARY AND EXPLANATION

Ellner et al., in 1966, reported the development of a blood agar formulation, which has been designated as Columbia Agar. The base achieves the more rapid and luxuriant growth obtained from casein hydrolysate media with the sharply defined hemolytic reactions, more typical colonial morphology and improved pigment production achieved with media containing infusion peptone.

Sheep blood allows detection of hemolytic reactions and supplies the X factor (heme) necessary for the growth of many bacterial species but lacks V factor (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide), since it contains NADase which destroys the NAD. For this reason, Haemophilus influenzae, which requires both the X and V factors, will not grow on this medium. Fildes found that supplementing nutrient agar with a digest of sheep blood supplied both of these factors and the medium would support the growth of H. influenzae. The inclusion of bacitracin makes the enriched Columbia Agar medium selective for the isolation of Haemophilus species from clinical specimens, especially from the upper respiratory tract.

Columbia Agar with 5% sheep blood is a general all-purpose enriched primary isolation medium that allows growth of all clinically significant anaerobes and facultative anaerobes. Columbia Agar supplemented with 5% sheep blood is recommended when processing clinical specimens for unusual organisms, such as Bartonella bacilliformis, the causative agent of Oroya fever and Peruvian wart. Columbia Agar supplemented with 5% sheep blood and 20 μg of ampicillin per mL is used in isolating Aeromonas sp. from stool samples of patients showing clinical symptoms of gastroenteritis.

PRINCIPLE

Columbia Agar Base supplemented with sheep, rabbit or horse blood derives its superior growth-supporting properties from the combination of peptones prepared from pancreatic digest of casein, meat peptic digest and heart pancreatic digest. Yeast extract and corn starch are also included in the formulation and serve as energy sources with yeast extract being a supplier of the B-complex vitamins. Sodium chloride maintains osmotic balance in the medium.

It should be noted that Columbia Sheep Blood Agar has a relatively high carbohydrate content and, therefore, beta-hemolytic streptococci may produce a greenish hemolytic reaction that may be mistaken for alpha hemolysis.