Evaluation of three commercial systems for the identification of pathogenic Neisseria and Branhamella species against the conventional method.

We compared three commercial systems for the identification of Neisseria and Branhamella spp. with the conventional method using cystine-tryptic digest agar (CTA) supplemented with carbohydrates, DNase production, and nitrate reduction. We evaluated the API quadFerm+ [( API], Analytab Products, Inc., Plainview, N.Y.), NEISSERIA [( Pasteur], Diagnostics Pasteur, Marnes-la-Coquette, France), and Neisseria Identification Discs [( Oxoid], Oxoid Ltd., Basingstoke, England) using the conventional method as a reference. One hundred and twenty-nine strains were included in this study. The conventional method identified 125 strains (96.9%). Four strains of N. gonorrhoeae remained glucose-negative in the CTA media but gave positive reactions in the API system. API, Pasteur, and Oxoid identified 126 (97.7%), 124 (96.1%), and 62 strains (48.1%), respectively. API and Pasteur seem to be very useful systems for the differentiation of clinically significant species of Neisseria and Branhamella. API has the additional advantage of requiring only a 3 h incubation period.