Consensus statement on measures to promote equitable authorship in the publication of research from international partnerships.

Despite the acknowledged injustice and widespread existence of parachute research studies conducted in low- or middle-income countries by researchers from institutions in high-income countries, there is currently no pragmatic guidance for how academic journals should evaluate manuscript submissions and challenge this practice. We assembled a multidisciplinary group of editors and researchers with expertise in international health research to develop this consensus statement. We reviewed relevant existing literature and held three workshops to present research data and holistically discuss the concept of equitable authorship and the role of academic journals in the context of international health research partnerships. We subsequently developed statements to guide prospective authors and journal editors as to how they should address this issue. We recommend that for manuscripts that report research conducted in low- or middle-income countries by collaborations including partners from one or more high-income countries, authors should submit accompanying structured reflexivity statements. We provide specific questions that these statements should address and suggest that journals should transparently publish reflexivity statements with accepted manuscripts. We also provide guidance to journal editors about how they should assess the structured statements when making decisions on whether to accept or reject submitted manuscripts. We urge journals across disciplines to adopt these recommendations to accelerate the changes needed to halt the practice of parachute research.

Measurement of serum bactericidal activity and use of vancomycin for treatment of nutritionally variant streptococcal bacteremia.

Nutritionally variant streptococci appear more resistant to antimicrobial treatment that other viridans streptococci. We describe a patient with nutritionally variant streptococcal bacteremia who responded to treatment with vancomycin. Results of serum bactericidal tests did not vary in six different media and correlated minimally with the serum concentration of vancomycin.

Minimum inhibitory and bactericidal concentrations of 44 antimicrobial agents against three standard control strains in broth with and without human serum.

Standard minimum inhibitory and bactericidal concentrations are not established for most antimicrobial agents against strains of bacteria commonly used for quality control in susceptibility testing. The effects of cation and human serum supplementation of broth on the values are also unknown. Therefore, we performed 10 minimum inhibitory and bactericidal concentration determinations for 44 antimicrobial agents against the standard control strains Escherichia coli ATCC 25922, Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 25923, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa ATCC 27853 in Mueller-Hinton broth and in Mueller-Hinton broth supplemented with calcium, magnesium, and 50% pooled human serum. Agreement of replicates was within one twofold dilution 97% of the time. Supplemented Mueller-Hinton broth gave higher minimum inhibitory concentrations for 24 antibiotics against S. aureus, for 17 drugs against E. coli, and for 12 drugs against P. aeruginosa, whereas it gave lower minimum inhibitory concentrations for 1 antibiotic against S. aureus, for 5 against E. coli, and for 5 against P. aeruginosa. Results for minimum bactericidal concentrations were similar. Added serum did not further affect the increased resistance of P. Aeruginosa to aminoglycosides encountered with cation supplementation of broth. These results provide expected values for the quality control strains when minimum inhibitory and bactericidal concentrations are determined in these two Mueller-Hinton media.