Immunofluorescence in Diagnostic Bacteriology

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Abstract
For epidemiologic and clinical control of infantile diarrhea caused by enteropathogenic Escherichia coli (E.E.C.), rapid detection and identification of the etiologic serotype is essential.1,11Conventional procedures for even presumptive identification of the organisms take from 24 to 48 hours at best. Moreover, since a specific selective culture medium for isolation of E.E.C. is not available,2it is difficult to select E.E.C. colonies for serotyping from mixtures of enteric organisms existing in infant carriers, adult carriers, or treated infants. Fluorescent antibody techniques appeared to be ideally suited for an approach to the solution of these problems. A previous report from this laboratory3described the use of fluorescein-labeled antibodies for identifying E. coli 0127:B8in fecal smears from an outbreak of diarrhea caused by that organism. Thomason et al.4confirmed these results by utilizing polyvalent-labeled antisera representing 9 E.E.C. serotypes to identify E. coli 0127: B8

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