Method of detecting and counting microorganisms

Abstract

The invention provides a cosmetic or dermatological method for detecting and/or selectively quantifying individual microorganisms, and/or whole groups of microorganisms, which are present on human or animal skin, comprising the steps of removing a sample of the microflora of the human or animal skin, treating the sample with a deinhibiting medium, adding the treated sample to a culture medium which exhibits favorable growth conditions for a defined group of microorganisms but unfavorable growth conditions for other microorganisms, to produce a selective culture, and incubating the selective culture over a sufficiently long period of time, to allow only the group of microorganisms for which the culture medium exhibits favorable growth conditions the opportunity to multiply, in association with metabolic products, in particular CO.sub.2, produced which collect either in the culture medium itself or in a test vessel which is provided for the purpose and which contains an indicator medium, and the concentration of the metabolic products is elucidated by means of the change in the alternating current (AC) resistance of the culture medium and/or the indicator medium in the test vessel and, after appropriate calibration, is correlated by means of arithmetical methods with the number of microorganisms in the selective medium.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.