Evaluation of a commercial selective enrichment broth for campylobacters

A commercial selective enrichment broth for campylobacters has been tested with 580 human and 120 animal fecal specimens, by comparing its performance with that of direct plating of duplicate specimens. No appreciable advantage was noted in isolations of C. jejuni from human stools (22 versus 21), while a statistically significant (p less than 0.001) superiority was found in isolations from animal specimens (53 versus 30). The combined procedure (i.e. direct plating plus enrichment) allowed a total of 27 isolations (4.7%) from human specimens and 57 isolations (47.5%) from animal specimens.