Modified Vogel and Johnson Agar for Staphylococcus aureus

Abstract

The formula for a modified Vogel and Johnson Agar is presented. In addition to the ingredients found in Vogel and Johnson Agar, the new medium contains, per liter: 5 g of beef extract, 2 g of deoxyribonucleic acid, 2 g of phosphatidyl choline and 780 units of catalase spread on the plates before inoculation. This new medium is as effective as Baird-Parker Agar in enumeration of stressed Staphylococcus aureus, and in enumeration of staphylococci from naturally contaminated processed food samples.

Enumeration of Vital and Thermally Stressed Staphylococcus aureus in Foods Using Baird‐Parker Pig Plasma Agar (BPP)

“…To these ends sodium chloride (Chapman 1945;Busta & Jezeski 1963;Nefedjeva 1964), potassium tellurite and lithium chloride (Vogel & Johnson 1960;Moore & Nelson 1962;Crisley et al 1965;Giolitti & Cantoni 1966) as well as antibiotics (Crisley et al 1965;Sinell & Baurngart 1967;Orth & Anderson 1970) have been added as selective agents. Egg yolk (Carter 1960;Baird-Parker 1962;Crisley et al 1965), mannitol (Chapman 1945;Vogel & Johnson 1960;Orth & Anderson 1970) and DNA (Andrews & Martin 1978) for diagnostic purposes. Catalase has been added to Vogel-Johnson agar (V-J) specifically to enhance recovery of stressed cells (Andrews & Martin 1978).…”

“…Egg yolk (Carter 1960;Baird-Parker 1962;Crisley et al 1965), mannitol (Chapman 1945;Vogel & Johnson 1960;Orth & Anderson 1970) and DNA (Andrews & Martin 1978) for diagnostic purposes. Catalase has been added to Vogel-Johnson agar (V-J) specifically to enhance recovery of stressed cells (Andrews & Martin 1978).…”

“…In comparative studies of many different media (Crisley et al 1965;Collins-Thompson et al 1974;Stiles & Clark 1974;Hurst et al 1976;Stadhouders etal. 1976;Andrews & Martin 1978;Niskanen & Aalto 1978;Rayman et al 1978), the medium of Baird-Parker (BP) (1962) containing tellurite and egg yolk has invariably proved to be superior or at least as good as the other media under test. Unfortunately, identification is not conclusive as both egg yolk positive and negative colonies may prove to be Staph.…”

“…No statistical evaluations were done but it appeared that this modified medium was as efficient as the original BP. Andrews & Martin (1978) modified V-J agar with the addition of several compounds, notably catalase, to improve the enumeration of stressed cells of Staph. aureus.…”

Comparative studies of selective media for recovery of Staphylococcus aureus from natural waters

“…aureus from different sources and these refer to a very limited number of media. Thus, Andrews & Martin (1978) demonstrated that the highest recovery of Staph. aureus was achieved on PCVJ agar, a modification of Vogel-Johnson medium and also showed that Baird-Parker and Vogel-Johnson agars had a low selectivity.…”