BACKGROUND Appropriate antibiotic therapy is critical in the management of severe sepsis and septic shock to reduce mortality, morbidity and health costs. New methods for rapid antibiotic susceptibility testing are needed because of increasing resistance rates to standard treatment. AIMS The purpose of this study was to evaluate the performance of a novel microfluidic method and the potential...

A simplified method has been developed for agar dilution antimicrobial susceptibility testing of anaerobic bacteria, designed to economize on time and money when only a few isolates need to be tested. The procedure is based on the principle of using filter paper disks as carriers of the antibiotic and 35- by 10-mm petri dishes which, when inoculated with the Steers replicator, can test up to fo...

E-test, Vitek 2, MicroScan, agar dilution, and disk diffusion were compared for detection of decreased linezolid susceptibility due to 23S rRNA gene G2576T mutation among 32 clinical Enterococcus strains initially reported as intermediate or resistant by E-test alone or Vitek 2 confirmed by E-test. Agar and broth dilution methods were in concordance with PCR detection of the mutation, and disk ...

The inhibitory and bactericidal effects of sodium polyanetholesulfonate on Neisseria meningitidis were neutralized by blood lysis which occurs within the pediatric Isolator 1.5 Microbial tube (E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., Inc., Wilmington, Del.). Lysed blood was more effective than 2.5% gelatin in preventing the inhibitory effect. All but 1 of 16 N. meningitidis strains were killed by 0.06% ...

Comparison of MIC results obtained in different parts of the world is currently difficult because of variations in methods. In this study, cation-adjusted Mueller-Hinton broth, the NCCLS-recommended medium, was compared with Iso-Sensitest broth, which is widely used in Europe. Microbroth dilution testing, using the NCCLS procedure, was performed on 124 Gram-positive (staphylococci and enterococ...

Granada medium was evaluated for the detection of group B streptococci (GBS) in vaginal and rectal swabs compared with selective Columbia blood agar and selective Lim broth. From May 1996 to March 1998, 702 pregnant women (35 to 37 weeks of gestation) participated in this three-phase study; 103 (14.7%) of these women carried GBS. In the first phase of the experiment (n = 273 women), vaginorecta...

The efficacy of cefazolin or cefpirome alone or combined with rifampin was compared with that of vancomycin alone or combined with rifampin in an experimental model of methicillin-resistant, beta-lactamase-producing, coagulase-negative staphylococcal endocarditis. Phenotypically, the mecA gene-positive strain used in vivo did not exhibit methicillin resistance by the agar dilution or disk susce...

The present study evaluated the antimicrobial in vitro effects of the salivary proteins lactoferrin and lysozyme on microorganisms involved in the carious process, obtaining their minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) and minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC). Streptococcus mutans (ATCC 25175) and Lactobacillus casei (ATCC 7469) were submitted to broth macrodilution of lysozyme at 80 mg/mL ...

Blood was cultured from guinea pigs with experimental Legionella pneumophila serogroup 1 pneumonia, using four different methods. A 0.03-ml amount was spread onto each of several plates of buffered charcoal-yeast extract supplemented with alpha-ketoglutarate (BCYE) (direct plate); 1.5 ml each was inoculated into a BCYE agar-yeast extract broth bottle (biphasic), a pediatric Isolator tube (E. I....