comparison of deferred and bedside culture of neisseria gonorrhoeae: a study to improve the isolation of gonococci for antimicrobial susceptibility testing

Background and objectives: antimicrobial resistance of neisseria gonorrhoeae is globally spread and threatening. culturingof n. gonorrhoeae is the only method to collect live isolates for investigation antimicrobial resistance profile. therefore,quality assessment of n. gonorrhoeae culture is essential for successful isolation of gonococci. this study was conducted toevaluate deferred and bedside culture of n. gonorrhoeae depending on the year season and temperature condition of transportmedia temporary storage.materials and methods: urogenital swabs from 46 symptomatic heterosexual patients with gonorrhoea and subculture ofn. gonorrhoeae in 46 suspensions in concentrations 1.5 × 10^8 cfu/ml were subjected to the study. non-nutritive transportingmedium amies agar gel medium with charcoal (copan diagnostics inc., brescia, italy) was used for deferred culture andselective chocolate agar tm+polyvitex vcat3 (biomérieux, marcy-l'étoile, france) for both tested methods of culture.results: the specificity of both bedside and deferred methods of culture was 100%. the sensitivity of deferred culture washigher than of bedside culture (82.6% vs 47.8%, p<0.0005). deferred culture showed significantly higher sensitivity comparingto bedside culture in summer (100% vs 50%, p=0.003), and comparably the same as for bedside culture in autumn,winter and spring.conclusion: the viability of n. gonorrhoeae subcultures was significantly higher in refrigerated samples from transportmedia than from ambient one after exposition from 48 to 96 hours. optimal viability of n. gonorrhoeae was observed whentransport swabs were kept refrigerated up to 48 h (73.9-93.5%) or ambiently – up to 24 h (87%). updating laboratory guidelinesregarding sampling and timely specimen processing might improve gonococcal culture performance.