BM0070 Brain Heart Infusion Broth is a nutritious, isotonic, general-purpose medium suitable for the isolation of most micro-organisms including many fastidious organisms and, with enrichment as appropriate, is suitable as a base for blood culture medium.
Modern BHI typically uses an infusion from porcine brains and hearts rather than calf brain tissue, and uses disodium phosphate as a buffer, rather than the calcium carbonate used by Rosenow and Haden. It is a nutrient-rich medium and can therefore be used to culture a variety of fastidious organisms, including streptococci, pneumococci, and meningococci, which can be challenging to grow.
Brain Heart Infusion Broth is recommended by the FDA BAM for the enrichment for pathogenic Escherichia coli in foods and environmental samples, and as a medium used in the coagulase test for the identification of Staphylococcus aureus from foods, and Gram-positive cocci from cosmetic samples.
NB: Organisms that produce large amounts of acid in the medium may overwhelm the buffering system and as a result ‘auto-sterilise’ the culture.
An enriched general purpose broth being an isotonic medium with Tryptose providing a wide range of substrates. The medium is further enriched with 10% horse serum for more fastidious organisms and as an enrichment broth.
BM0070 Brain Heart Infusion Broth is a nutritious, isotonic, general-purpose medium suitable for the isolation of most micro-organisms including many fastidious organisms and, with enrichment as appropriate, is suitable as a base for blood culture medium. Modern BHI typically uses an infusion from porcine brains and hearts rather than calf brain tissue, and uses disodium phosphate as a buffer, rather than the calcium carbonate used by Rosenow and Haden. It is a nutrient-rich medium and can therefore be used to culture a variety of fastidious organisms, including streptococci, pneumococci, and meningococci, which can be challenging to grow. Brain Heart Infusion Broth is recommended by the FDA BAM for the enrichment for pathogenic Escherichia coli in foods and environmental samples, and as a medium used in the coagulase test for the identification of Staphylococcus aureus from foods, and Gram-positive cocci from cosmetic samples. NB: Organisms that produce large amounts of acid in the medium may overwhelm the buffering system and as a result ‘auto-sterilise’ the culture.
BM0110 Cooked Meat with Brain Heart Infusion Broth Overlay is suitable for recovery, isolation, and storage of the most fastidious anaerobes, such as Clostridium species as well as many aerobes. Cooked Meat Medium prepared from heart tissue is a well-established medium for the cultivation of anaerobic and aerobic organisms. Cooked Meat with Brain Heart Infusion Broth Overlay has been shown to initiate bacterial growth from very small innocua and to maintain the viability of cultures over long periods of time; it is especially useful in culturing from blood samples. Mixed cultures of bacteria survive without displacing the slower growing organisms. The products of growth do not rapidly destroy the inoculated organisms and therefore it is an excellent medium for the storage of aerobic and anaerobic bacteria.
