Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 11, 2026

Culturing and Maintaining Clostridium difficile in an Anaerobic Environment
Published on: September 14, 2013
On the difficulties of isolating Clostridium difficile from hospital environments
D J Malik1, K V Patel, M R J Clokie
1Department of Chemical Engineering, Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK. d.j.malik@lboro.ac.uk
None:
Spores of Clostridium difficile were deposited on to a stainless steel surface and subsequently exposed to a chlorine-releasing disinfectant (dichloroisocyanurate). Recovery of the spores was carried out using RODAC plates containing a variety of selective and non-selective agars. The non-selective agar media yielded higher recoveries of both control and chlorine-stressed spores. Our results show that the antibiotics used in selective media imposed an additional stress on both disinfectant-treated and untreated spores resulting in considerably reduced recoveries. This could lead to a serious underestimate of the extent of environmental contamination by this organism.
Related Concept Videos
Techniques for Isolation of Pure Cultures
Transmission-based Precautions I: Contact, Enteric, and Droplets
Contact Precautions:
Contact precautions are the measures taken to prevent the transmission of infectious agents, especially epidemiologically important microorganisms such as MRSA or influenza, primarily transmitted through direct or indirect contact with an...
Need for Obtaining Pure Cultures
Key Techniques in Microbiology
