Comparison of Commercial Amies Transport Systems with In-House Amies Medium for Recovery of Neisseria gonorrhoeae

Microbiologists are still encumbered by the variable performance of Amies charcoal transport medium in recovery of Neisseria gonorrhoeae. The objective of this study was to evaluate and select a good quality commercial system to replace our in-house preparation. We adsorbed 0.1 ml of a suspension from 30 gonococcal isolates onto each swab type and replaced the swab into the transport medium. We plated the swabs to New York City medium at 0, 24, 48, 72, and 96 h. We compared the survival of each isolate in the commercial Amies transport systems with that in our in-house Amies transport medium. The best recovery was observed with Copan transport systems. Some systems are inadequate and unacceptable for culture of gonococci.