RSS Feeds
Prevalence of Gram-Negative Rods in the Normal Pharyngeal Flora
Abstract
We obtained throat cultures from 100 randomly selected people free from any chronic upper or lower respiratory disease who did not work in a hospital and who had not experienced any acute illness or received any antibacterial therapy in the 4 weeks preceding culture. Eighteen percent harbored either a species of Enterobacteriaceae or Pseudomonas aeruginosa in their pharynx. In all cases, colony counts were low, the majority being detected in broth media selective for Gram-negative rods. There were no clear-cut age or sex distributions of Gram-negative pharyngeal carriage. These data imply that, in at least some cases, isolation of Gram-negative rods from sputum of untreated patients may be a normal finding, and that in some patients with pulmonary infection, the pretreatment, upper respiratory tract flora may serve as the source of subsequent superinfection with Gram-negative rods.
Article and Author Information
-
▸From the Channing Laboratory and Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and Departments of Medicine and Microbiology, Boston City Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts.
-
Grant support: Doctor Rosenthal is supported by research grant HD-03693 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and by training grant T01-A1-00068 from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Doctor Tager is a recipient of a fellowship from the Medical Foundation of Boston and is supported by contracts NO-HR3-2944 and NO-HR3-2906 from the National Heart and Lung Institute.
-
▸Requests for reprints should be addressed to Ira B. Tager, M.D., Channing Laboratory, Boston City Hospital, 774 Albany St., Boston, MA 02118.
-
- Received June 6, 1974.
- Accepted June 4, 1975.
