ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: A microcalorimetric study was carried out using a Staphylococcus epidermidis population to determine the reproducibility of bacterial growth and the variability of the results within certain experimental parameters (temperature, bacterial concentration, sample thermal history). Reproducibility tests were performed as series of experiments within the same conditions using either freshly prepared populations or samples kept in cold storage. In both cases, the samples were obtained by serial dilution from a concentrated TSB bacterial inoculum incubated overnight. RESULTS: The results show that experiments are fairly reproducible and that specimens can be preserved at low temperatures (1 - 2°C) at least 4 days. The thermal signal variations at different temperatures and initial bacterial concentrations obey a set of rules that we identified. CONCLUSION: Our study adds to the accumulating data and confirms available results of isothermal microcalorimetry applications in microbiology and can be used to standardize this method for either research or clinical setting.
