BACKGROUND Determination of vancomycin minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) can influence the agent used to treat methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection. We studied diagnostic accuracy using E-test and VITEK(®) 2 against a gold standard broth microdilution (BMD) methodology, the correlation between methods, and associations between vancomycin MIC and MRSA phenotype from ...

Some beliefs suggest that garlic is an excellent natural antimicrobial drug that can be considered as an alternative form of treatment or prophylaxis in gastrointestinal infections. The purpose of this study is to determine quantitative antimicrobial activity of garlic against Shigella by detecting the MIC. Garlic extracts were obtained and dilution susceptibility assay was used to determine th...

When antibiotic sensitivity of microorganisms is tested by agar dilution, single antibiotics are incorporated in solid media and 'spot' inocula of test strains are applied to the antibiotic media and to a plate without antibiotic. The usual method of quality control is to include control strains of known sensitivity.1 However, control strains are usually sensitive to a number of antibiotics, an...

The clinical estimation of liver size using radioisotope scintiscans as a standard of reference has been shown to be very inaccurate. The main source of error is in the location of the upper border of the liver. Physical characteristics of the patients influence this measurement.

Disease dilution, the reduction in infection risk with increased host diversity, has recently attracted attention as one of the many indispensable services provided by rich ecological communities. Immunological variation seems to play an important role in many dilution mechanisms, with non-competent hosts acting as dead ends for various generalist pathogens. Interestingly, life pace in host spe...

Butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) activity assay and inhibitor phenotyping can help to identify patients at risk of prolonged paralysis following the administration of neuromuscular blocking agents. The assay plays an important role in clinical chemistry as a good diagnostic marker for intoxication with pesticides and nerve agents. Furthermore, the assay is also commonly used for in vitro characteri...

In 111 lupus patients we compared the potential of the IgG and IgM anticardiolipin antibody (ACA) enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and four different lupus anticoagulant (LAC) assays (partial thromboplastin time (PTT) of a 1:1 mixture of patient and control plasma with phospholipids from animal (PTT-st) or human brain (PTT-HB); PTT with dilutions of human brain phospholipids (PL diluti...

BACKGROUND In epidemiological studies, within-person variability in plasma total homocysteine (tHcy) measurements may dilute the association of 'usual' levels of tHcy with risk of cardiovascular disease, referred to as 'regression dilution'. The aim of this report was to estimate the magnitude of regression dilution after varying intervals of follow-up. METHODS Regression dilution ratios (RDR...