Intended Use:

Recommended for cultivation of fastidious organisms (especially respiratory isolates).

Product Description:

Microserv Chocolate agar Plate (Microserv-CA plate) is a nonselective, enriched growth medium used for isolation of pathogenic bacteria. It is a variant of the blood agar plate, containing red blood cells from sheep blood that have been lysed by slowly heating to 80°C. Chocolate agar is used specially for growing fastidious respiratory bacteria, such as Haemophilus influenzae and Neisseria meningitides apart from other bacterial pathogens. In addition, some of these bacteria, most notably H. influenzae, need growth factors such as nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (factor V or NAD) and hemin (factor X), which are inside red blood cells; thus, a prerequisite to growth for these bacteria is the presence of red blood cell lysates. The heat also inactivates enzymes which could otherwise degrade NAD. The agar is named for its colour and contains no chocolate products.