Evaluation of Disk Diffusion Test with Glucose- and Methylene blue-Enriched Mueller-Hinton Agar for Susceptibility Testing of Fluconazole against Candida Isolates / 대한진단검사의학회지

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Recently, the disk diffusion testing of fluconazole against Candida spp. has been attempted in order to provide a simple inexpensive method in the routine laboratory. We investigated the possibility and reliability of a fluconazole disk diffusion method using a Mueller-Hinton agar supplemented with glucose and methylene blue (GM-MH). METHODS: One hundred and seven isolates of Candida spp. (54 C. albicans, 21 C. glabrata, 20 C. tropicalis, 6 C. parapsilosis, 4 C. krusei, and 2 C. lusitaniae) were tested with the broth microdilution method of National Committee for Clinical Laboratory Standards (NCCLS) document M27-A2 and a disk diffusion test using GM-MH agar. RESULTS: The overall categorical agreement between the NCCLS method and the disk diffusion method was 89.8% for fluconazole, with 0.9% very major errors and 9.3% minor errors; no major errors were detected. CONCLUSIONS: These data suggest that the fluconazole disk diffusion test on GM-MH agar can be used as a routine screening procedure for susceptibility of Candida spp. in the clinical laboratory.