[Brain-heart media for blood cultures.]

Area of Science:

• Microbiology
• Clinical Diagnostics

Background:

• Bloodstream infection (BI) diagnosis relies on effective blood culture media.
• Russia currently uses fish meal-based media, unlike European countries that use brain-heart media (BHM).
• There is a need for locally produced BHM to improve diagnostic efficiency in Russia.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a formulation and preparation method for liquid and agar brain-heart media (BHM).
• To enhance the efficiency of obtaining blood cultures for diagnosing bloodstream infections.
• To establish physical, chemical, and biological parameters for the new BHM.

Main Methods:

• Developed a novel brain-heart extraction (BHE) technique.
• Formulated and prepared liquid brain-heart media (LBHM) and brain-heart agar (BHA).
• Microbiological quality control involved testing on patient blood samples and comparison with existing media (TGM, MPA, glucose broth).

Main Results:

• LBHM demonstrated significantly higher growth rates for aerobic (2.4x) and microaerophilic (3.2x) microorganisms compared to TGM.
• LBHM facilitated the growth of anaerobic microbes, unlike TGM, and increased monomicrobial and polymicrobial hemoculture yields.
• BHA showed superior performance over MPA, with increased aerobic and microaerophilic growth under both aerobic and anaerobic conditions.

Conclusions:

• The developed liquid and agar BHM provide optimal conditions for a wide range of pathogen growth.
• This new BHM formulation has the potential to significantly improve bloodstream infection diagnosis.
• Local production of BHM can enhance diagnostic capabilities in regions where it is not currently available.