Evaluation of the SLOMYCO Sensititre® panel for testing the antimicrobial susceptibility of Mycobacterium marinum isolates

Background: The agar dilution method is currently considered as the reference method for Mycobacterium marinum drug susceptibility testing (DST). As it is time-consuming, alternative methods, such as the E-test, were evaluated for M. marinum DST, but without success. The SLOMYCO Sensititre (R) panel, recently commercialized by TREK Diagnostic Systems (Cleveland, OH), can be used for DST in slow-growing mycobacteria and for antimicrobial agents recommended by the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) for M. marinum DST. The main goal of this work was to evaluate the SLOMYCO Sensititre (R) panel method for DST in M. marinum isolates from human patients and fish relative to the reference agar dilution method. Methods/Results: The reproducibility of the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) determination (+/- 1 log(2) dilution) was very good for both the agar dilution method and SLOMYCO Sensititre (R) panel (>90 % agreement). The percentage essential agreement between methods varied, depending on the drug: between 97 and 75 % for ciprofloxacin, moxifloxacin, linezolid, isoniazid, clarithromycin, amikacin, rifabutin and rifampin, 74 % for trimethoprim, 72 % for doxycycline, 70 % for sulfamethoxazole, 59 % for streptomycin, 33 % for ethambutol and only 2.2 % for ethionamide. When the agar dilution and SLOMYCO Sensititre (R) panel results were converted into interpretive criteria, the category agreement was 100 % for amikacin, ciprofloxacin, clarithromycin, moxifloxacin, rifabutin, sulfamethoxazole and trimethoprim, 98 % for ethambutol and 96 % for rifampin and no agreement for doxycycline. Conclusions: The SLOMYCO Sensititre (R) panel method could provide a potential alternative to the reference agar dilution method, when DST in M. marinum is required, except for doxycycline.