Methods for culturing anaerobes from human specimen
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Updated: Feb 14, 2026

Culture Methods to Determine the Limit of Detection and Survival in Transport Media of Campylobacter Jejuni in Human Fecal Specimens
Published on: March 10, 2020
Elodie Guilhot1, Saber Khelaifia1, Bernard La Scola1
1Aix Marseille Univ., IRD, AP-HM, MEPHI, IHU Méditerranée Infection, Marseille, France.
Abstract:
Anaerobes represent the dominating population in the human gut microbiota and play a key role in gut homeostasis. In addition, several anaerobes are now considered as probiotics and they remain essential to several processes in the field of biotechnology. With the implementation of MALDI-TOF MS in routine laboratories, anaerobes are no longer neglected in clinical microbiology, as their identification is made easy. However, the isolation and identification of anaerobic bacteria, remains time consuming, fastidious and costly. Various strategies have been developed, from sampling to culturing human specimens, which will be discussed in this paper. Also, particular attention is paid to isolating species with special medical importance, as for contribution to the field of culturomics.
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