NUTRITIONAL ANALYSIS AND AN ENRICHED MEDIUM FOR FERMENTATIVE TREPONEMES ISOLATED FROM SUBGINGIVAL PLAQUE

In order to cultivate fermentative treponemes isolated on Medium 10 wi th the plate-in-bottle method from subgingival plaque, we developed th e enriched Medium 10. Enriched Medium 10 broth consisted mainly of Try pticase peptone (2 g/l), yeast extract (10 g/l), glucose (5 g/l) and v olatile fatty acids mixture (3.1 ml/l). The growth curves in enriched Medium 10 broth showed that clinical isolates of Treponema socranskii reached the early stationary phase on the 3rd-5th day, and the doublin g times averaged 22.2 h. By using enriched Medium 10, the nutritional analysis of oral treponemes was examined for each compound of the vola tile fatty acid and various sera. Clinical isolates were found to requ ire iso-butyric acid, 2-methylbutyric acids and/or iso-caproic acid in dependently for their growth. However, the growth of these fermentativ e treponemes was inhibited by addition of various sera to this medium.