An emergency department physician suspected Corynebacterium dipthteriae when examining the sore throat of an exchange student from S. America.  What is the appropriate media for the culture of the nasopharyngeal swab obtained from the patient?

The most predominant anaerobe isolated in animal bites is:

 A listless 12 month old boy with a fever of 103F was taken to the ER.  He had been diagnosed with an ear infection 3 days earlier.  A spinal tap was performed, but only one tube of CSF was collected from the lumbar puncture.  The single tube should be submitted to which department first?

A visitor to South America who returned with diarrhea is suspected of being infected with V. cholera.  Select the best medium for recovery and identification of this organism.

A catalase-positive, gram-positive short rod, was recovered from the blood of a prenatal patient.  The organism appeared on a 5% sheep blood as white colonies surrounded by a small zone of beta hemolysis.  The following tests were performed, indicating the patient was infected with which organism? Motility= positive (tumbling on wet prep) room temperature; Motility = positive (umbrella shaped on semisolid agar) room temperature; Glucose= positive (fermentation); Esculin = positive; VP – positive.

If a pinpoint colony on blood agar after 24 hours of incubation is isolated, and if the colony is oxidase-, urease-, and indole-negative, and also exhibits bipolar staining on Gram stain, then the suspect bioterror agent is most likely:

A positive Simmons citrate test is seen as a:

Mycobacteria stained by the Ziehl-Neelsen or Kinyoun methods with methylene blue counterstain are seen microscopically as:

Which of the following is the best technique to identify Dientamoeba fragilis (a parasite) in stool?

“Clue cells” are seen on a smear of vaginal discharge obtained from an 18-year old female ER patient. This finding, along with a fishy odor (amine) after the addition of 10% KOH, suggests bacterial vaginosis caused by which organism?