Little difference between minimum inhibitory concentrations of Mycobacterium tuberculosis wild-type organisms determined with BACTEC MGIT 960 and Middlebrook 7H10

Abstract

The MIC wild-type (WT) distribution for Mycobacterium tuberculosis in BACTEC 960 MGIT is not defined, which may result in poor reproducibility for drug susceptibility testing (DST), as several DST methods with different breakpoints are in use. In a comparison between MGIT and Middlebrook 7H10 medium of seven first- and second-line drugs, including 133 MIC determinations of 15 WT isolates, we found an agreement of 91.7% within ± one MIC dilution step. The results confirm the agreement in MIC testing between 7H10 and MGIT and indicate that breakpoints could be harmonized in order to avoid misclassification.

Keywords: Drug susceptibility testing; epidemiological cut off; minimal inhibitory concentration; normalised resistance interpretation; resistance; tuberculosis.