Students Information

At the beginning of the quarter I assigned homework and one of the questions was "What differential stain would be used to diagnose the following diseases?" This is a fairly standard assignment in microbiology. It emphasized the link between class information and real clinical situations. It encourages students to read on their own. The standard answer for anthrax is endospore stain. One student wrote down M'Fadyean stain which I never heard of. It turns out it is considered the gold standard, but it is not performed by most labs because it takes 1 year for the solution to be mature enough to be used (Don't ask!). Very few government labs (USDA) have this stain on hand. Her reference was the World Organisation for Animal Welfare. It is the animal equivalent of the World Health Organisation. I added the link to list on the right.