Aerokey II: a flexible key for identifying clinical Aeromonas species.

A small subset (n = 18) of highly discriminatory tests was derived from the feature frequency of 50 tests used in the study of 167 predominantly clinical Aeromonas strains. Seven of these eighteen tests were used to construct a flexible, dichotomous key, Aerokey II, for identifying clinical aerontonads: esculin hydrolysis, gas from glucose, acid from arabinose, indole production, acid from sucrose, Voges-Proskauer reaction, and resistance to cephalothin (30 micrograms). This schema was initially evaluated in a single-blind trial of 60 well-characterized clinical Aeromonas hydrophila (n = 21), A. caviae (n = 19), and A. veronii bv. sobria (n = 20) strains from an independent laboratory. Of the 60 strains tested, 58 (97%) were accurately identified to the species level. Aerokey II was further evaluated with 18 additional American Type Culture Collection and reference strains representing the more recently proposed taxa A. veronii bv. veronii, A. schubertii, A. jandaei, and A. trota and accurately identified all of these strains.