Antimicrobial testing standards published

The National Committee for Clinical Laboratory Standards has recently published a reference report concerning antimicrobial testing standards: NCCLS Report M42-R, "Methods for Antimicrobial Disk Susceptibility Testing of Bacteria Isolated from Aquatic Animals; A Report." The document provides the most up-to-date techniques for disk diffusion susceptibility testing of aquatic isolates, as well as quality control ranges for monitoring the performance of study conditions.

Many bacteria that cause disease in aquatic animals require growth conditions that vary substantially from routine mammalian veterinary pathogens. Researchers, therefore, have developed antimicrobial testing standards for organisms that prefer or require conditions such as low temperatures, semisolid media, or supplemented media (e.g., sodium chloride, serum).

Future documents will be prepared to describe standard broth dilution and agar dilution techniques. As more information becomes available, especially regarding interpretive criteria, it will be added to future editions of this new NCCLS report.

Individuals can purchase the NCCLS report by visiting the committee's Web site at www.nccls.org, clicking on "catalog" and then "reports," and selecting the new reference publication. The publication costs $35 for NCCLS members and $65 for nonmembers.