Quenching of the antibacterial activity of chlorhexidine and benzalkonium by Letheen broth and Letheen agar in relation to wild-type and envelope mutant strains of gram-negative bacteria.

Letheen broth and Letheen agar have been investigated for their ability to act as neutralising and recovery media for wild-type and envelope mutants exposed to chlorhexidine diacetate and benzalkonium chloride. At high dilutions, untreated cells of the envelope mutant of Pseudomonas aeruginosa 799/61 were unable to produce colonies on Letheen agar. As a result of various procedures, it was concluded that dilution in Letheen broth and plating in Isosensitest agar was a suitable method for quenching cationic bactericides without harming the test strains, and that the increasing use of Gram-negative bacteria with outer membrane defects means that considerable care may be necessary in selecting media for evaluating bactericidal activity.