Can you have a bacterial infection even when cultures don't grow anything out?
Monday, April 5th, 2010 at
2:43 am
For over a year I’ve been told I have some kind of bacterial infection. However, numerous cultures have been sent out and they never come back with anything. No bacteria, aerobic/anaerobic, no fungus, no yeast. Is it possible to have a bacterial infection even if 8,9, 10+ cultures all come back with ZERO growth? The only thing Dr. knows for sure is that I have lots and lots of white blood cells, which would indicate my body is trying to fight something off.
Filed under: Bacterial Vaginosis
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!
Certain fastidious organisms have special growth requirements. That means they do just fine in the human body, causing you all sorts of misery, but to grow them in a lab environment, you have to use specialized collection/transport/innoculation/incubation techniques or materials.
Example: You’re not going to grow diptheria by doing a normal throat culture, no matter how many times you do it.
Perhaps your doctor needs to consider more unique and uncommon organisms that might be the source of your infection. And if he won’t, another doctor might.