Evaluation of oxacillin and cefoxitin disks for detection of resistance in coagulase negative staphylococci

Coagulase-negative Staphylococcus spp. was considered nonpathogenic until the emergence of multiresistance and the demonstration of their participation as infectious agents. In Brazil, oxacillin resistance may be present in over 80% of isolates, and the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute standardized a disk-diffusion method to predict this resistance in Staphylococcus. The aim of this study was to evaluate the variability among commercial disks of oxacillin (1 µg) and cefoxitin (30 µg) widely used in clinical laboratories of microbiology, compared with mecA gene and minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of oxacillin. The use of oxacillin and cefoxitin disks simultaneously allowed the detection of important differences, particularly, in less frequent species such as S. cohnii, S. haemolyticus, S. saprophyticus, and S. sciuri. Disks of cefoxitin of the brand 2 displayed good correlation with the mecA gene (98.7%) and oxacillin MIC (97.8%), while major discrepancies were observed using disks of brand 1. One of the critical points in the diffusion disk test is the quality of the disks: the use of better quality disks associated with molecular methods lead to better results to define the best antibiotic therapy.

Bibliographic Details

Main Authors:	Antunes,Ana Lúcia Souza, Secchi,Carina, Reiter,Keli Cristine, Perez,Leandro Reus Rodrigues, Freitas,Ana Lúcia Peixoto de, d'Azevedo,Pedro Alves
Format:	Digital revista
Language:	English
Published:	Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, Ministério da Saúde 2007
Online Access:	http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0074-02762007000600010
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