Comparison of a new, bismuth-iron-sulfite-cycloserine agar for isolation of Clostridium perfringens with the tryptose-sulfite-cycloserine and blood agars.

A new differential and selective, bismuth-iron-sulfite-cycloserine (BISC) medium, for isolation and enumeration of Clostridium perfringens from food and feces, was developed. The medium was compared with the widely-used tryptose-sulfite-cycloserine (TSC) medium and blood agar (BA) in recovering actively growing cells, cold- (refrigerated and frozen) stressed, and heat-stressed C. perfringens cells, and heat-activated spores from human feces. Both selective media were satisfactory in recovering actively growing cells and heat-activated spores of C. perfringens. Both were inferior to non-inhibitory blood agar in recovering heat or cold-stressed cells. The advantages of the new BISC medium over the TSC medium were: elimination of the need to prepare pour- or overlay-agar plates, which simplified inoculation of specimens on the medium and simplified the subcultures of colonies for confirmatory identification. All colonies of C. perfringens developed on BISC were black or dark gray. This was contrary to TSC medium, which gave, on average, 39.6% of white colonies when inoculated with the pure cultures of C. perfringens.