In vitro susceptibility testing of Fusarium is becoming increasingly important because of frequency and diversity of infections and because resistance profiles are species-specific. Reference methods for antifungal susceptibility testing (AFST) are those of Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) and European Committee on Antimicrobial Susceptibility (EUCAST), but breakpoints (BPs) h...

The National Committee for Clinical Laboratory Standards reference broth macrodilution method for antifungal susceptibility testing was compared with the E test by testing 86 clinical isolates of Candida spp. and Cryptococcus neoformans. The MIC agreement rates for the two methods for Candida spp. were 73-89% within +/-1 doubling dilution and 87-100% within +/-2 dilutions. For C. neoformans, ag...

MICs of fluconazole and amphotericin B were determined independently for 100 coded yeast isolates by each of six laboratories to determine reproducibility of results by using a colorimetric oxidation-reduction-based broth microdilution test. In addition, each site tested five quality control isolates on at least four different occasions during the study. Results agreed within a three-dilution r...

Complicated bacterial infections should prompt clinicians to pursue a definitive diagnosis. Two methods of bacterial culture and antibiotic susceptibility testing are commonly used in veterinary medicine: (1) the disk diffusion technique and (2) the broth dilution technique. Both methods identify the infecting pathogen and the antibiotics that are likely to inhibit its growth. The broth dilutio...

Although pyrazinamide is commonly used for tuberculosis treatment, drug-susceptibility testing is not routinely available. We found polymorphisms in the pncA gene for 70% of multidrug-resistant and 96% of extensively drug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates from South Africa and Georgia. Assessment of pyrazinamide susceptibility may be prudent before using it in regimens for drug-resi...

The Australian Gonococcal Surveillance Programme has continuously monitored antimicrobial resistance in clinical isolates of Neisseria gonorrhoeae from all states and territories since 1981. In 2012, 4,718 clinical isolates of gonococci from public and private sector sources were tested for in vitro antimicrobial susceptibility by standardised methods. Variation in antibiotic susceptibility pat...

Previously, we showed that microbial susceptibility to antimicrobials in concentrations non-toxic for human cells in culture could be tested using the wet disc topical antimicrobial assay. In this report, wet disc assay and agar well diffusion assay results were compared testing the susceptibility of Ps. aeruginosa isolates from burn patients to concentrations of Polymyxin B non-toxic for cultu...

The current guidelines recommend culture and antibiotic susceptibility testing of Helicobacter pylori following two failed eradication attempts. Where testing is unavailable, epidemiological data for secondary H. pylori resistance are essential to allow for the rational use of antibiotics. The aim of this study was to describe the temporal changes in antibiotic resistance among adults previousl...

In the words of the authors, the paper by A. W. Bauer et al., from the University of Washington in Seattle, on a standardized single-disk method for antibiotic susceptibility testing “. . . consolidate(s) and update(s) previous descriptions of the method and provide(s) a concise outline for its performance and interpretation.” Clinical microbiologists were relieved that finally a disk diffusion...

For complicated infections, or in patients at risk for therapeutic failure or developing resistance, identification of the infecting organism most appropriately should be based on appropriately collected cultures with (ideally) tube dilution susceptibility testing to allow assessment of “how” susceptible the isolate is, in general, to other drugs, but specifically to the drug of choice, such th...