Bact alert sn

Before contamination, the baseline sterility of 40 bags of PLTs was confirmed by microbiologic controls in accordance with the standard operating procedure used in our laboratory. In addition, 8 mL of sample was inoculated in both aerobic and anaerobic (BacT/ALERT SN; bio-M erieux) culture bottles and incubated for up to 7 days.
For inoculation of 40 bags of PLTs, the eight bacterial reference species solution was serially diluted in sterile water to reach a final concentration of approximately 100 CFU/mL. The inoculate concentrations were quantified in duplicate by direct plating of 1 mL onto Colombia blood agar plates, incubating them at 378C and enumerating after 24 hours, and were then identified according to our procedure using mass spectrometric methods (i.e., MALDI-TOF MS, Bruker Daltonics).
One milliliter of inoculum of each bacterial suspension strain was spiked into each bag with a sterile syringe to obtain a final concentration of approximately 0.3 CFU/ mL. After contamination, the 40 bags of PLTs were stored under standard blood bank storage conditions for 24 hours with agitation at 50 turn/min in PLT incubator bags at ambient temperature, according to US Food and Drug Administration recommendations. 2