Spirochetes are markedly prevalent in periodontal disease but are not included as predominant cultivable organisms because of the inability to quantify them by viable count. A successful method was developed for enumerating viable oral spirochetes in pure culture as colony-forming units (CFU) in new oral spirochete (NOS) medium with 0.7% agarose and using small tissue-culture flasks. Three species of oral spirochetes in log-phase growth in NOS broth were used for evaluation of the method. Reliable, consistent and reproducible viable counts of pure spirochete cultures were obtained. / This method was extended to enumerate viable oral spirochetes from periodontal pockets. The antibiotic rifampin (20 $ mu$g/ml) was found to be an excellent selective agent for such a count when added to NOS-agarose medium. Counts of cultivable oral spirochetes from 10 subgingival plaque samples ranged from 12.5% to 28.2% of the total cultivable anaerobic bacteria. In addition, by the use of this method thirteen new oral spirochetes were isolated. / The viable count technique was modified and employed to study the locomotion of spirochetes. Migration of oral spirochetes out of NOS-Bacto agar medium into NOS-agarose medium was observed and two locomotory phenotypes of oral spirochetes were detected.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.68246 |
| Date | January 1993 |
| Creators | Qiu, Yu-Shan |
| Contributors | Chan, Z. C. S. (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Science (Department of Microbiology and Immunology.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001397531, proquestno: AAIMM94504, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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