Cefoperazone is a new cephalosporin with a very wide spectrum of activity, including activity against Pseudomonas aeruginosa. It has less activity on enterococci and Acinetobacter. Of the 459 selected bacterial strains tested in this study, only 1.5% (7 strains and 6 genera) had minimum inhibitory concentrations of >128 ,ug/ml. For a minimum inhibitory concentration breakpoint of <32 p.g/ml (su...

T he concept of attacking invading microorganisms without harming the host was first introduced by Paul Ehrlich. In 1910 he discovered ‘‘salvarsan’’, which he announced as a magic bullet for the treatment of syphilis. Penicillin, produced by the fungus, Penicillium notatum, was first discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928, purified by Florey and Chain in 1940, and shown to have wide applicabil...

Korgenski and Daly recommend charcoal horse blood agar (Regan-Lowe agar) for the detection of erythromycin resistance in Bordetella pertussis by agar dilution, Etest methodology, or agar diffusion. MICs for most isolates were #0.06 to 0.12 mg/ml by agar dilution and the Etest, while the MIC for the only resistant strain was 16 to 64 mg/ml (4). Charcoal agar may be suitable for discrimination be...

Studies in the 1960s demonstrated the problems of variability in susceptibility testing methods, especially those affecting the performance of disc diffusion procedures. These studies made apparent the need for standardization and resulted in more clearly defined performance limits for growth medium, incubation conditions, inoculum concentration, disc content for diffusion methods, the setting ...

Antimicrobial resistance has emerged as one of the most-significant health care problems of the new millennium, and the clinical microbiology laboratory plays a central role in optimizing the therapeutic management of patients with infection. This minireview explores the potential value of innovative methods for antimicrobial susceptibility testing of microorganisms that could provide valuable ...

In line with the availability of an increasing array of systemic antifungal agents, there is a need for accurate, reproducible and predictive susceptibility testing of fungal isolates in order to help inform clinical choice. Much early attention on antifungal susceptibility testing focused on defining test parameters that produced reproducible and reliable intra- and inter-laboratory results an...

We agree with Gould’s comments about the shortcomings of the Stokes’ method and the need for the ‘comparability of data between different centres across the country so that resistance surveillance data can be reliably compared’. In fact we would go further and suggest that, since bacteria do not respect national borders, there should be worldwide comparability of data. Where we part company wit...

Introduction: This study is aimed to compare phenotypic test methods and determine antibiotic susceptibility pattern of AmpC beta-lactamase producing uropathogenic Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae in clinical isolates. Method: E. coli and K. pneumoniae were identified by standard microbiological procedures. Screening of AmpC beta-lactamase production was done by using cefoxitin disc (...

BACKGROUND Increasing reports of carbapenem resistant Acinetobacter baumannii infections are of serious concern. Reliable susceptibility testing results remains a critical issue for the clinical outcome. Automated systems are increasingly used for species identification and susceptibility testing. This study was organized to evaluate the accuracies of three widely used automated susceptibility ...

Introduction: Multi-drug resistant (MDR) P. aeruginosa is constantly increasing and causing severe issues in combatting widely spread health problems. The aim of this study was to assess colistin susceptibility in MDR P. aeruginosa isolates obtained from different infection sites. Methods: Ninety clinical isolates of P. aeruginosa were collected from different hospitals of the Tabriz Univer...