AFB-Color carbol fuchsin solution

Used to detect mycobacteria (AFB cold staining)

The AFB-Color carbol fuchsin solution - for the microscopic investigation of acid-fast bacteria (AFB) (cold staining), is a ready-to- use solution used for human-medical cell diagnosis and serves the purpose of the bacteriological and histological investigation of sample material of human origin, for example smears of enriched bacterial cultures or histological sections of e. g. the lung. The cell wall of acid-fast bacteria has a high proportion of wax and lipids and hence absorbs dyes only very slowly. The most efficient staining method is the hot staining according to Ziehl-Neelsen. In this method, carbolfuchsin solution is applied to the specimen and heated. This heating process accelerates the rate at which the fuchsin dye is absorbed and thus the formation of the mycolate-fuchsin complex in the cell wall. The AFB-Color Kit (Product number 1.16450) offers a modified AFB-Color Carbol fuchsin solution which abolishes heating (Kinyoun method, cold staining). Once the acid-fast bacteria have absorbed the fuchsin dye, it is virtually impossible to decolorize them again, even after intense treatment with a decolorizing solution such as e. g. hydrochloric acid in ethanol. Accordingly, acid-fast bacteria are termed as acid- and alcohol-fast for staining, and are stained red in the microscopic visualization. Correspondingly, all non-acid-fast microorganisms are counterstained with an appropriate dye. In this instruction for use 110630 AFB-Color malachite green (oxalate) solution or 1.01287 Loeffler′s methylene blue is used for counterstaining.
The 500 ml bottle of AFB-Color carbol fuchsin provides approx. 250 stainings.
Pretreatment of the specimens with Sputofluol^™(Product number 1.08000) dissolves the bacteria from the surrounding viscid sputum and cell material. This product is registered as IVD and CE marked. For more details, please see instructions for use (IFU). The IFU can be downloaded from this webpage.

SPUTOFLUOL is a trademark of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany