@article{17605,
  keywords = {Animals, Biopsy, Ethidium, Fluorescent Dyes, Foot, Humans, leprosy, Mice, Mice, Inbred BALB C, Mycobacterium leprae, Skin},
  author = {Katoch V M},
  title = {Comparative assessment of viability of M.leprae by mouse foot-pad and fluorescent staining techniques.},
  abstract = {<p>Morphological characteristics have been used as a parameter to assess the viability of M.leprae in leprosy patients. However, with the advent of the mouse foot-pad technique, viability of M.leprae is determined by growing the bacilli in the mouse foot-pad. In recent years, a fluorescent staining technique using fluorescent diacetate-ethidium bromide (FDA-EB) has been used to assess the viability of cultivable mycobacteria as well as M.leprae. The purpose of this study was to compare the viability of M.leprae by both mouse foot-pad and fluorescent staining techniques. M.leprae strains from both untreated and treated patients as well as mouse passaged strains of M.leprae were used for the comparison. Percentage of green-stained bacilli in the inoculum was compared with that of multiplication of M.leprae in the mouse foot-pad. It was observed that there was no correlation between the estimates of viable M.leprae by fluorescent staining and by mouse foot-pad inoculation. FDA-EB staining appears to reflect only trends as absence of green staining cells had overall general correlation with loss of infectivity to mouse foot-pad but, the converse was not found to be true.</p>},
  year = {1994},
  journal = {Indian journal of leprosy},
  volume = {66},
  pages = {455-62},
  month = {1994 Oct-Dec},
  issn = {0254-9395},
  language = {eng},
}