Polymyxin Susceptibility Testing and Breakpoint Setting.

Susceptibility testing of polymyxins has been subject to intensive review and revision in recent years. A joint working group was established by the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute and the European Committee on Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing to establish a reference method. Issues examined included the effects of divalent cations, binding to laboratory materials, and addition of polysorbate 80. The working group recommended the use of broth microdilution without the addition of polysorbate 80 as the reference method. Published studies have shown that other testing methods, including agar dilution, disk diffusion and gradient diffusion, have unacceptably high levels of very major errors compared to the reference method, and are not recommended for routine laboratory use. Most data were for the testing of colistin; less information was available for polymyxin B. The joint working group was also asked to consider the setting of clinical breakpoints for relevant pathogens. This task involved examination of the available pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic, pharmacokinetic-toxicodynamic and population clinical pharmacokinetic data. All current pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic targets are based on MICs generated using the reference broth dilution procedure.

CLSI Methods Development and Standardization Working Group Best Practices for Evaluation of Antimicrobial Susceptibility Tests.

Effective evaluations of antimicrobial susceptibility tests (ASTs) require robust study design. The Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) Subcommittee on Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing has recognized that many published studies reporting the performance of commercial ASTs (cASTs) suffer from major design and/or analysis flaws, rendering the results difficult or impossible to interpret. This minireview outlines the current consensus of the Methods Development and Standardization Working Group of the CLSI Subcommittee on Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing regarding best practices for systematic evaluation of the performance of an AST, including the analysis and presentation of essential data intended for publication.