Niacin production test in mycobacteria: Replacement of benzidine - cyanogen bromide reagent by o-tolidne - cyanogen bromide

Venkataraman, P and Prabhakar, R (1977) Niacin production test in mycobacteria: Replacement of benzidine - cyanogen bromide reagent by o-tolidne - cyanogen bromide. Indian Journal of Tuberculosis, 24 (4). pp. 153-154. ISSN 0019-5705

[thumbnail of 197702.pdf]
Preview
PDF
197702.pdf - Published Version

Download (14kB)

Abstract

The identification of M. tuberculosis depends primarily on the niacin production test. Runyon and others (1959) described a method based on the observations of Konno (1956) using aniline as the reagent. However, the aniline reagent gives a yellow colour which can cause difficulty in the interpretation of the results, particularly in the case of the chromogenic mycobacteria. Hence several workers prefer the test employing benzidine (Medveczky, 1960) or o-tolidine (Guttierrez-Vazquez, 1960), since the pink colour produced in these tests is easier to read. The standard method for niacin production test at this Centre has been the one using benzidine. However, satisfactory supplies of benzidine are no longer available, as the manufacture of this compound’ has recently been stopped. Hence it was decided to investigate the test using o-tolidine. Though other workers (Tarshis, 1960, 1961; Gangadharam and Droubi, 1971) have compared the benzidine and o-tolidine methods on small numbers of cultures, no large scale investigation of these two methods has been reported. Therefore a direct controlled comparison of these two methods was undertaken, the results of which are reported here.

Item Type: Article
Subjects: Tuberculosis > Laboratory Research
Divisions: Basic Science Research
Depositing User: Dr. Rathinasabapati R
Date Deposited: 25 Jul 2013 07:54
Last Modified: 10 Mar 2016 04:34
URI: http://eprints.nirt.res.in/id/eprint/132

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item