A total of 805 eye swabs from 541 patients with suspected viral or
chlamydial KC was tested prospectively for the presence of adenovirus,
HSV, and C. trachomatis within 1 week of receipt. Of the 805
specimens, 456 in virus transport medium (Hanks’ balanced salt
solution, pH 7.4, 10% [vol/vol] fetal calf serum, 2.5% [wt/vol]
sodium bicarbonate, 200 IU/ml penicillin G, 200 mg/ml streptomycin, and
5 mg/ml amphotericin B) had investigation requests for viral etiology,
whereas 349 specimens in sucrose phosphate (2SP) transport medium (8 mM
KH2PO4, 12 mM
K2HPO4, 0.2 M sucrose, 2.5μ
g/ml amphotericin B, 50 μg/ml streptomycin, and 100 μg/ml
vancomycin) had chlamydial investigation requests. All the specimens
were tested for the three agents by the multiplex PCR and its
corresponding uniplex PCRs. The 456 viral specimens were also tested
for the presence of adenovirus and HSV by virus isolation, and the
remaining 349 chlamydial specimens were tested for C.
trachomatis by the Amplicor PCR and Immune Dot Blot (IDB) test.