Tony. Barb, howell-jolly vs cocci

[Guest guest]

Could you possibly get those bastards to multiply in a tube blood

culture, to show they are cocci rather than howell-jollys? Maybe one

could incubate them 10h or so at 37 C, then compare with a fresh blood

sample?

Contamination with non-target organisms would be one potential

problem, and youd just have to do your best to ID things

morphologically and with staining charecteristics.

Another problem is that immune factors in blood in a tube might check

down the bugs just as well as blood does in your body, therefore the

bugs in the incubated blood might show no net growth. The eucaryote

protein synthesis inhibitor cycloheximide (beware, toxic) would

probably shut down the leucocytes in the tube culture (tho it would

not effect existing complement or antibody in the blood). This might

(?) be enough to promote net multiplication of the bugs.

Barb, can Howell-Jollys be way over at the edge of the red cell like

in that pic?

Tony, was the pic prior to any treatment?