Isavuconazole (BAL4815) is a promising novel broad-spectrum triazole in late-stage clinical development that has proven active in vitro against Aspergillus and Candida species. We compared the in vitro activities of this agent with those of voriconazole and fluconazole by the CLSI (formerly NCCLS) M38-A and M27-A2 procedures against a large collection of 1,007 relevant opportunistic fungi colle...

Culture and susceptibility testing of Helicobacter pylori strains was performed in a large multinational, multicenter randomized clinical trial. Culture was carried out on gastric biopsy samples obtained from 516 patients at entry and had a sensitivity of 99% when the [(13)C]urea breath test was used as a reference. Susceptibility testing was performed for clarithromycin and metronidazole on 48...

Cefoxitin is increasingly recommended for detection of methicillin resistance in Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) when using disk diffusion testing. In this study, 95 mecA-negative S. aureus isolates and a highly genetically diverse collection of mecA-positive S. aureus types (n=50) were used to investigate the influence of technical factors such as disk potency, incubation time, and temperature on...

The prevalence of heterogeneous intermediate-level resistance to vancomycin (hVISA) in Staphylococcus aureus was assessed by screening a large collection of recent isolates. Susceptibility testing by the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute broth microdilution method and the Etest GRD (glycopeptide resistance detection) method (bioMérieux) was performed on 4,210 clinically significant S....

This study aimed to assess the interlaboratory reproducibility at four university hospital laboratories in the southeast region of France of the Etest technique for the determination of caspofungin (CAS) and amphotericin B (AMB) MICs and to compare it to the CLSI broth microdilution reference method. Consecutive clinical yeast isolates (n = 198) were included in the study. AMB and CAS MICs were...

BACKGROUND High rates of vancomycin failure in methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections have been increasingly reported over time. The primary objective of our study was to determine the impact of vancomycin exposure and outcomes in patients with MRSA bacteremia initially treated with vancomycin. METHODS This was a single-center retrospective analysis of 320 patients with...

for 108 Enterobacteriaceae were 0.25 –1 mg/L (mode 0.5 mg/L) for the susceptible population and 32 to .128 mg/L (mode 32 mg/L) for the resistant population. For the 64 P. aeru-ginosa isolates, the MICs of colistin were 1 – 4 mg/L (mode 4 mg/L) for the susceptible population and 8 – 16 mg/L (mode 8 mg/L) for isolates considered as resistant. When determined by Etest, there was a shift towards 2-...

Using a set of 33 well-defined extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL)-producing strains of Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae, we compared three screening methods for ESBL detection: (i) a double-disk synergy test, (ii) a three-dimensional test (both the double-disk synergy test and the three-dimensional test were performed with ceftriaxone, ceftazidime, aztreonam, and cefepime), and (...