Detection of decreased fluoroquinolone susceptibility in salmonellas and validation of nalidixic acid screening test

We evaluated 1,010 Salmonella isolates classified as fluoroquinolone suscep tible according to the National Committee for Clinical Laboratory Standards guidelines for susceptibility to nalidixic acid and three fluoroquinolones , These isolates were divided into two distinct subpopulations, with the gr eat majority (n = 960) being fully ciprofloxacin susceptible and a minority (n = 50) exhibiting reduced ciprofloxacin susceptibility (MICs ranging bet ween 0.125 and 0.5 mu g/ml). The less ciprofloxacin-susceptible isolates we re uniformly resistant to nalidixic acid, while only 12 (1.3%) of the fully susceptible isolates were nalidixic acid resistant. A similar association was observed between resistance to nalidixic acid and decreased susceptibil ity to ofloxacin or norfloxacin. A mutation of the gyrA gene could be demon strated in all isolates for which the ciprofloxacin MICs were greater than or equal to 0.125 mu g/ml and in 94% of the nalidixic acid-resistant isolat es but in none of the nalidixic acid-susceptible isolates analyzed. Identif ication of nalidixic acid resistance by the disk diffusion method provided a sensitivity of 100% and a specificity of 87.3% as tools to screen for iso lates for which the MICs of ciprofloxacin were greater than or equal to 0.1 25 mu g/ml. We regard it as important that microbiology laboratories endeav or to recognize these less susceptible Salmonella strains, in order to reve al their clinical importance and to survey their epidemic spread.