Molecular Detection of Resistance Determinants

摘要

The development of new antibiotics and the emergence of novel resistance mechanisms to counteract these drugs create a dynamic and challenging task for the clinical microbiology laboratory. The goal of antimicrobial resistance testing is to provide timely therapeutic options to guide the management of infectious diseases resulting from bacterial infections. Antimicrobial susceptibility has classically been determined using a variety of in vitro methods, such as disk diffusion, broth microdilution, and automated instrument-based methods. Using these methods, the reporting of MICs and interpretations can require 24 to 96 h after a pure culture of the suspected pathogen is obtained (6). Unfortunately, results obtained after 48 h are often of little clinical value and are unlikely to alter antimicrobial therapy. The extended turnaround associated with phenotypic antimicrobial resistance testing provides an opportunity for the use of alternative technologies capable of producing more timely results. The first reports in this supplement explore the manner in which the criteria for interpreting MICs are developed and the clinical relevance of antimicrobial susceptibility testing. In this report, we present an alternative to routine susceptibility testing and examine the role of molecular susceptibility testing now and in the future.