Enhanced recovery, enrichment and detection of Mycobacterium marinum with the Portable Microbe Enrichment Unit (PMEU)

The use of PMEU significantly accelerated the growth of otherwise slowly growing Mycobacterium sp. Compared to the static reference cultures, M. marinum was detected after 24-48 h of cultivation in the PMEU Spectrion® equipped with infrared (IR) sensors. Parallel static cultures did not exhibit or indicate mycobacterial growth within these time limits, and essentially no growth was found in them. The PMEU approach could provide a powerful tool for the rapid diagnosis and determination of environmental and clinical isolates of slow-growing species of mycobacteria. This approach also provides a method for improving diagnostics for M. tuberculosis and other pathogenic mycobacteria, including their antibiotic resistant forms, which represents a significant health problem worldwide and in Africa in particular.