Recovery of Neisseria gonorrhoeae from 4 commercially available transport systems

• Emerging antimicrobial resistance among Neisseria gonorrhoeae requires research in methods to transport viable isolates from patients to laboratories for antimicrobial susceptibility testing.
• Nutritive and non-nutritive transport systems are commercially available for N. gonorrhoeae.
• A nutritive system should be selected if transit times are expected to exceed 24 h.

Four commercial transport systems for the recovery of Neisseria gonorrhoeae were evaluated in support of the need to obtain culture isolates for the detection of antimicrobial resistance. Bacterial recovery from the InTray GC system was superior with minimal loss of viability in contrast to non-nutritive transport systems.