Meningitis is a disease o the central nervous system with a

Meningitis is a disease o the central nervous system with a variety of possible causative agents, including bacteria or viruses. Imagine that you work in a clinical microbiology lab, and you receive a sample fluid from a suspected meningitis case. You do a Gram stain on the sample first, of course. What five different pieces of relevant information can you learn from the Gram stain?

Solution

Gram staining is used to differentiate between two groups of bacteria namely Gram positive and gram negative. This differentiation is based on the fact whether the bacteria is able to retain the stain.Gram positive bacteria retains the stain due to the peptidoglycan (50 to 90 %) present in the cell wall and they stain purple. On the other hand Gram negative bacteria has a thinner layer of peptidoglycan and hence are unable to retain the stain and appear red or pink as a result of the counter stain i.e Safranin. Hence, on performing a Gram stain on a sample,