Evaluation of Etest for susceptibility testing of multidrug-resistant isolates of Mycobacterium tuberculosis

J Clin Microbiol. 2000 Dec;38(12):4599-603. doi: 10.1128/JCM.38.12.4599-4603.2000.

Abstract

To prescribe effective treatment schemes for patients with tuberculosis, more-efficient susceptibility testing techniques for Mycobacterium tuberculosis are needed, especially in regions with multidrug resistance. Etest (AB BIODISK, Solna, Sweden) is a simple technique that provides quantitative drug susceptibility results for M. tuberculosis in 5 to 10 days from a culture grown at low cost. The performance of Etest was compared to that of the reference proportion method, using 95 M. tuberculosis clinical isolates of which 42.1% (40 of 95) were resistant to at least one antibiotic by the reference method. Overall agreement between Etest and the reference method was 98.9% (94 of 95) for detection of multidrug resistance; for resistance to individual drugs, agreement was 97.9% (93 of 95) for rifampin, 96.0% (92 of 95) for ethambutol, 94.7% (90 of 95) for isoniazid, and 85.3% (81 of 95) for streptomycin. This study supports the utility of Etest for timely detection of drug resistance in M. tuberculosis and for use in tuberculosis control programs.

Publication types

  • Evaluation Study
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Drug Resistance, Microbial
  • Drug Resistance, Multiple
  • Humans
  • Microbial Sensitivity Tests / methods*
  • Mycobacterium tuberculosis / drug effects*
  • Sensitivity and Specificity