Talk:Acid-fastness

Headline text
wt questions r asked during the performance of acid fast staining -- —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 221.134.253.77 (talk • contribs).
 * I'm sorry, what about acid fast staining did you want more info on? -- MarcoTolo 06:33, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi. Shouldn't Rhodococcus, Tsukamurella and Gordonia also be on the list of (partially-) acid-fast bacteria? --217.68.116.150 (talk) 13:07, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Merger proposal
I believe that information at Ziehl–Neelsen stain probably belongs in this article. As of right now, this article actually has more useful information on the staining procedure and the Ziehl–Neelsen stain is not notable for anything other than checking for acid-fastness. Plus, some information from the Ziehl–Neelsen stain article can be removed. Thoughts? The Haz talk 03:22, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I Differ:
 * Acid fast staining is not a negligibly small subject and there are so many stains and so many variations and modifications. Acid fastness is a property of many microorganisms and the general principles of it should be discused here.. What is acid fast. What is modified acid fast (nocardia etc) what are the stains what are the modifications what are their basic comparisons do need to be here.. and then how to identify different types of MOTT (mycobacteria other than TB) by the staining characteristics. I thinkZiehl–Neelsen stain, Kinyoun stain, Fite stain, Ellis and Zabrowarny stain (excludes phenol), Auramine-rhodamine stain, Auramine phenol stain all probably deserve a entry on their own. If not all of them, at least Z-N definitely does as there are literally thousands of scientific publications on it. Each of the entries should have a cross reference to each other. If Fite cannot grow beyond a stub it may be a subsection under ZN. But Kinyoun is already an entry and I think it deserved to be. It is fairly different from ZN and it is important for people to learn about this choice. (it reduces fire hazard)--Dr.saptarshi (talk) 17:55, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
 * The dako guide says "the Fite stain is used for staining of M.leprae which has cell walls that are more susceptible to damage in the deparaffinization process. the Fite procedure thus includes peanut oil in the deparaffinization solvent to protect the bacterial cell wall. the acid used for decolorization in the Fite procedure is also weaker". Actually daco guide is talking about one subtype of Fite faraco. Per the stains file there are several variations of Fite, like Fite-Faraco Staining and Wade Fite staining which mainly differ in the dewaxing . --Dr.saptarshi (talk) 18:31, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
 * IHC world gives one of the original references:

--Dr.saptarshi (talk) 18:44, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
 * 1) Faraco 1938 (?)
 * 2) Fite, G.L., Cambre, F.J. and Turner, M.H. 1947, Procedures for demonstrating lepra bacilli in paraffin sections. Archives of Pathology, V43,    p624-625

==The terms should not be murged, as AFS (acid fast stain) is used generally for various species (e.g. weak in Nocardia & Rhodococcus or even some protozoa), contrary to Ziehl - Neelsen that is AFS used for Mycobacterium spp== The term Ziehl–Neelsen stain refers to the identification of Mycobacterium spp such as M. tuberculosis and M. leprae. AFS (acid fast stain) as a term generally refers to the identification of many microbial species beyond Mycobacterium species. For example it is used for Cryptosporidium parvum (a protozoan) or Nocardia staining! In Nocardia and Rhodococcus the stain is modified (to 1% H2SO4). 688dim (talk) 13:51, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Second paragraph: These organisms are easy to characterize, "though". It should be NOT easy to characterize
Acid-fast organisms are easy to characterize using standard microbiological techniques (e.g. Gram stain - if an acid-fast bacillus (AFB) was gram stained, the result would be an abnormal gram positive organism, which would indicate that further testing wasn't necessary), though they can be stained using concentrated dyes, particularly when the staining process is combined with heat. Once stained, these organisms resist the dilute acid and/or ethanol-based de-colorization procedures common in many staining protocols, hence the name acid-fast.[2]

It should be, as with the Spanish translation, that Acid-fast organisms are NOT easy to characterize using standard microbiological techniques [...], though they can be stained using conentraded dyes [...]

''At the end, these Acid-fast organisms are resistant to a normal Gram test, and although they do incorporate the staining quite easily, they end being confusing. Perhaps the word easy is not appropiate'' — Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.24.16.63 (talk) 21:15, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

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Possible old vandalism or just incorrect information
The article used to include the sentence:

Acid-fast organisms are difficult to characterize using standard microbiological techniques (e.g. Gram stain - if an acid-fast bacillus (AFB) was gram stained, the result would be an abnormal gram positive organism, which would indicate that further testing wasn't necessary), though they can be stained using concentrated dyes, particularly when the staining process is combined with heat.

This is just incorrect, a characterising feature of acid-fast organisms is how difficult they are to stain with other methods, including the gram stain. I don't know how this ended up saying easy, but I changed it to 'difficult'.

In addition, the article used to say "The most common staining technique used to identify genetically engineered acid-fast bacteria...". I don't know how that ended up in there, or what genetic engineering has to do with anything at all. I suspect vandalism, but these edits have been in place for a while. I removed the term 'genetically engineer', which, even if true (doubtful), is irrelevant to an article on a property of cellular structures.

I am not an expert on this topic, but these two pieces of flagrantly incorrect/irrelevant text in this start class article made me a little nervous about the validity of the rest of it. I am curious if anyone with a greater knowledge of microbiology than I has any input on the rest of the article. At the very least, a few more high-quality citations seem to be in order.

Michael Dacre (talk - contribs - email) 22:26, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

I made some more updates that change the structure of the start of the article and fix some of my concerns above, but I would still like an actual microbiologist to review this.

Michael Dacre (talk - contribs - email) 23:20, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

Excessive focus on Mycobacterium?
While it is true that Mycobacteria are the most well known acid-fast organisms, this isn't an article on Mycobacteria, we have one of those already, it is an article on the property of acid-fastness. Later sections of the article do a good job of illustrating this, but I feel like the initial part of the article has too great of a focus on that one genus. If anyone has time it would be great to flesh it out with more information on how acid-fastness works in e.g. spores, sperm, protozoa, etc.

Michael Dacre (talk - contribs - email) 23:25, 13 September 2017 (UTC)


 * While other organisms are acid-fast, the medical use of acid-fast stains is nearly exclusively in the diagnosis or exclusion of mycobacterial infection. I think it's inevitable that the article is going to contextualize the property by emphasizing its medical importance. - Nunh-huh 02:06, 14 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Fair enough, that is reasonable I suppose. I still think it would be nice to have more context here, but I don't have time to do it myself sadly. Michael Dacre (talk - contribs - email) —Preceding undated comment added 21:33, 14 September 2017 (UTC)