Comparison of commercial Amies transport systems with in-house Amies medium for recovery of Neisseria gonorrhoeae

Microbiologists are still encumbered by the variable performance of Amies c harcoal transport medium in recovery of Neisseria gonorrhoeae. The objectiv e of this study was to evaluate and select a good quality commercial system to replace our in-house preparation. We adsorbed 0.1 mi of a suspension fr om 30 gonococcal isolates onto each swab type and replaced the swab into th e transport medium. We plated the swabs to New York City medium at 0, 24, 4 8, 72, and 96 h. We compared the survival of each isolate in the commercial Amies transport systems with that in our in-house Amies transport medium. The best recovery was observed with Copan transport systems. Some systems a re inadequate and unacceptable far culture of gonococci.