Original article PDF Eun-Jee Oh, M.D., Jung-Do Jang, M.D., Yeon-Joon Park, M.D., Sun Moo Kim, M.D., Byung Kee Kim, M.D. Department of Clinical Pathology, College of Medicine, the Catholic University of Korea, Seoul, Korea Corresponding to Yeon-Joon Park Ann Clin Microbiol 2000;3(1):36-42.Copyright © Korean Society of Clinical Microbiology. Abstract Background: An accurate and rapid method for species identification of coagulase negative staphylococci (CNS) has been increasingly necessary for the clinical significance and planning the management of patients with staphylococcal infections. Recently, it has been reported that there is a highly conserved area on their 60KDa heat shock protein (HSP60) gene sequences between the interspecies of CNS and it can be amplified by a set of universal degenerate primer. This led us our attention to focus on whether the PCR-based RFLP method using Mse I restriction enzyme could be a useful tool for the species identification of CNS. Methods: In the present study, we

Case report PDF Seungok Lee, Jung-Joon Park, Eun-Jee Oh, Yeon-Joon Park, and Byung Kee Kim Department of Clinical Pathology, Kangnam St. Marys Hospital, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul, Korea Corresponding to Yeon-Joon Park, E-mail: yjpk@cmc.cuk.ac.kr Ann Clin Microbiol 2002;5(1):59-61.Copyright © Korean Society of Clinical Microbiology. Abstract Streptococcus pneumoniae is the most common cause of community-acquired pneumonia in adults and an important agent in other infections, including meningitis, otitis media, and conjunctivitis, etc. The optochin susceptibility test is the most widely used method to discriminate S. pneumoniae from other streptococci. However, 0.8-1.5% of S. pneumoniae contain optochin resistant population. Recently, we experienced three cases of variants of S. pneumoniae with decreased susceptibility to optochin. Equivocal optochin disk test should be confirmed by bile solubility, agglutination test, or DNA probe test. (Korean J Clin Microbiol 2002;5(1):59-61) Keywords Optochin, Decreased susceptibility, Streptococcus pneumoniae