MULTICENTER EVALUATION OF ATB FUNGUS - A STANDARDIZED MICROMETHOD FORYEAST SUSCEPTIBILITY TESTING

The micromethod for yeast susceptibility testing, ATB Fungus, was eval uated with 30 reference strains in three laboratories. Ready-to-use st rips with 5-fluorocytosine, amphotericin B, nystatin, miconazole, econ azole and ketoconazole were used. The test allowed the categorization of each strain as susceptible, intermediate or resistant to all the an tifungals tested, and 5-fluorocytosine and amphotericin B MIC determin ation. The results were compared with the MIC for each reference strai n obtained by a microdilution method on RPMI 1640 buffered with MOPS. The repeatability and intralaboratory and interlaboratory reproducibil ity were evaluated. ATB Fungus was a reliable and reproducible method with a repeatability of 96.6%, a reproducibility of 95.4% and showed a n excellent correlation (91.7%) with reference MICs.