[Histonet] yeast and bacteria on slides[Scanned]

[Kemlo Rogerson]

Do you have piped water into the stainer? Is this contaminated? The source
water maybe being contaminated within the staining machine. Any of your
Staff going rotten? 

View the slides along the process; when unused, after the water bath, after
drying, after staining, after mounting. Eat the elephant in small portions,
once you have identified the area in the process you can then focus on the
culprit; the 'scatter gun' approach rarely works, be logical. 

-----Original Message-----
From: Melissa Jans [mailto:histomjans <@t> yahoo.com] 
Sent: 01 February 2005 01:40
To: histonet <@t> lists.utsouthwestern.edu
Subject: [Histonet] yeast and bacteria on slides[Scanned]

I need some help!!
We have been experiencing some yeast and bacteria showing up on some of our
special stains.  It started about 2 weeks ago and seems to be sporadic (one
day...no problems, the next day, several stains are affected).  The yeast
and bacteria (rods) are clumped together all over the slide, on the tissue
sections, around the sections and on the slide in areas where there is no
tissue.  The stains we have seen the contamination are the Gram, PAS/D, PAS
and GMS.  All of these stains are automated except the Gram, so I do not
think the special stainer is the problem.
Here is what I have eliminated as problem areas:
-Processor solutions and paraffin (we cut and stained a block from another
institute and had contamination) 
-Waterbaths, slide drying boards, water containers (used to fill
waterbathes), stainer containers, ice pans (all of the mentioned have been
thoroughly bleached)
-Tap water and DI water (all water supplies have been tested by sending a
sample to micro...there was no bacteria or yeast detected)
-Stay-on used as a slide adhesive (smeared some on a slide and stained it)
-Bad batch of slides (we have had contamination on two different slide
sources (vendors))
 
Does anybody have any ideas?  What am I missing?  Any suggestions would be
much appreciated.
 
Melissa Jans
University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics

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