Performance of bioMérieux Lowenstein-Jensen slopes in plastic tube packaging, compared to existing phenotypic methods, for efficient recovery of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex.

Purpose: Lowenstein-Jensen (LJ) medium used for cultivating Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) is marketed in glass packaging. Breakage of glass slope is a major biosafety risk, especially during processing and storage, which gets magnified in large laboratories. We evaluated the performance of new bioMérieux (bMx) LJ slopes in plastic packaging, compared to bMx glass LJ medium and Becton Dickinson Mycobacterial Growth Indicator Tube (MGIT), for MTB recovery.

Performance characteristics of the VIDAS® ANTI-HEV IgM and IgG assays.

Background: Several unautomated anti-HEV diagnostic tests are presently available.

Objective: We have evaluated the performance of the new automated VIDAS® ANTI-HEV IgM and IgG assays.

Study Design: We assessed the reproducibility and cross-reactivity of both VIDAS assays and the analytical sensitivity and linearity of the VIDAS IgG assay.