Susceptibility testing of fastidious organisms

Susceptibility testing of fastidious organisms.

Sir, The NCCLS has published guidelines for the susceptibility testing of fastidious organisms. Following these guidelines for the assessment of a new trinem, sanfetrinem (GV 104326), against Neisseria spp. we obtained unexpectedly high MICs and therefore undertook a study to compare MICs obtained on a variety of media. The media compared were as follows: medium A, IsoSensitest agar (Unipath, B...

Antimicrobial susceptibility testing: special needs for fastidious organisms and difficult-to-detect resistance mechanisms.

Clinical microbiology laboratories are faced with the challenge of accurately detecting emerging antibiotic resistance among a number of bacterial pathogens. In recent years, vancomycin resistance among enterococci has become prevalent, as has penicillin resistance and multidrug resistance in pneumococci. More recently, strains of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus with reduced suscept...

Antimicrobial Agents for Routine Testing and Reporting on Fastidious Organisms

Recommendations for susceptibility tests on fastidious organisms and those requiring special handling.

Fastidious organisms present problems in antimicrobial susceptibility testing related to particular cultural requirements or slow growth. Methods for commonly isolated fastidious organisms, including haemolytic streptococci, Neisseria spp. and Haemophilus spp., are included in the description of the standardized disc diffusion method. However, some further information is given here for Haemophi...

Host factors and genetic susceptibility to infections due to intracellular bacteria and fastidious organisms.

While genetic polymorphisms play a paramount role in tuberculosis (TB), less is known about their contribution to the severity of diseases caused by other intracellular bacteria and fastidious microorganisms. We searched electronic databases for observational studies reporting on host factors and genetic predisposition to infections caused by intracellular fastidious bacteria published up to 30...