Clinical evaluation of the rapid carbohydrate degradation microtube method for identification of Neisseria species.

The rapid carbohydrate degradation (Carr Microbiologicals Wichita, Kans.) microtube method is a new test system designed for the identification of Neisseria spp. The system consists of four microtubes containing different carbohydrates in a peptone-Bitone basal medium. This method was evaluated for accuracy and speed in identifying species of Neisseria. Of the 386 clinical isolates used in this study, 98.4% were correctly identified to species level in 4 h with the rapid carbohydrate degradation system; parallel testing of the same isolates with conventional cystine-tryptic agar resulted in 96.1% accuracy in 48 h.