PERFORMANCE OF 3 COMMERCIALLY AVAILABLE MONOCLONAL REAGENTS FOR CONFIRMATION OF CHLAMYDIA-PNEUMONIAE IN CELL-CULTURE

We evaluated the performance of three commercially available monoclona l antibodies for confirmation of the presence of Chlamydia pneumoniae in cell culture by examining their abilities to stain inclusions of ei ght strains of C. pneumoniae. The antibodies tested were two unconjuga ted C pneumoniae-specific monoclonal reagents and one conjugated genus -specific reagent. All three produced similar intensities of staining of C. pneumoniae, with some strain-to-strain variation. Methanol appea red to be a better choice of fixative than acetone, which greatly redu ced the intensity of fluorescence with one of the species-specific ant ibodies.