title: Evaluation of Etest for susceptibility testing of multidrug-resistant isolates of Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
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.
authors: Centro Internacional de Entrenamiento e Investigaciones Médicas (CIDEIM), Cali, Colombia. molecular@cideim.org.co
authors: M H
authors: MH
authors: Hazbón
authors: M
authors: M
authors: del Socorro Orozco
authors: L A
authors: LA
authors: Labrada
authors: R
authors: R
authors: Tovar
authors: K A
authors: KA
authors: Weigle
authors: A
authors: A
authors: Wanger
mesh_terms: D004352:Drug Resistance, Microbial; D018432:Drug Resistance, Multiple; D006801:Humans; D008826:Microbial Sensitivity Tests / Q000379:methods*; D009169:Mycobacterium tuberculosis / Q000187:drug effects*; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity