A review of the shortcomings in the testing methods used and reporting of data in the literature on antimicrobial susceptibility

摘要

The susceptibility test protocols used in 186 published papers that reported 203 studies of the antimicrobial susceptibility of non-cholera Vibrio spp were examined. Only a very small percentage of the studies provided explicit evidence that they had used standardised susceptibility protocols. Although all 203 reported frequencies of resistance in the isolates they studied, 185 of them either did not provide the criteria they used to determine resistance, used criteria that had not been validated or used criteria that were inappropriate. Less than 10% of the studies used internationally-harmonised consensus-based interpretive criteria that were appropriate to their data. These shortcomings in the performance and/or the reporting of susceptibility had results such that it was difficult or impossible to compare the data generated in the various studies. It is argued that compliance with the recommendations of OIE Aquatic Animal Code for the performing and reporting of susceptibility studies would be a major step towards limiting the frequency of these shortcomings in the scientific literature.