[In vitro activity of antimicrobial agents against clinical isolates of Pseudomonas aeruginosa].

Two hundred and seven clinical isolates of Pseudomonas aeruginosa were collected at Tenri Hospital between April 2003 and March 2004. We determined the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of 16 antimicrobial agents, including prulifloxacin, pazufloxacin and biapenem which were recently published in Japan, against these isolates according to the guidelines of the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute. For the fluoroquinolones, the rank order of activity was prulifloxacin (MIC50, 0.

[Three sisters of pulmonary Mycobacterium avium complex disease].

We reported three sisters of pulmonary Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC) disease. The oldest sister was complaining of bloody sputum, and cultures were positive for M. avium.

[In vitro activity of a new semisynthetic echinocandin, micafungin, against clinical isolates of Candida species isolated in Tenri Hospital].

We have examined the antifungal activities of the available antifungal agents including micafungin (MCFG), one of the echinocandin antifungal group, against 92 yeast-like fungi isolated at our hospital during a 3-month period from November 2002 to February 2003. Determination of the antifungal susceptibility was conducted in conformity with the Standards of the Japanese Society for Medical Mycology. The MIC 80% of the antifungal agents against 4 fungi species including C.

[Application of the MIC breakpoints based on pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics parameter in the clinical laboratory].

The effectiveness of time-dependent antibiotics such as beta-lactams is related to the time above the MIC (TAM, %). We constructed a program to calculate the TAMs of beta-lactams using the pharmacokinetic parameters of the Japanese dosing regimen of a phase I study of the Japanese Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (JSAC), and compared them with the MIC breakpoints published by the National Committee for Clinical Laboratory Standards (NCCLS) and JSAC. If the effective TAM was assumed to be more than 40% of the dosing interval, the pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) breakpoints calculated by our program were in agreement with the JSAC breakpoints for pneumonia within 1 dilution MIC.

Evaluation of MicroScan ESBL confirmation panel for Enterobacteriaceae-producing, extended-spectrum beta-lactamases isolated in Japan.

We assessed use of the MicroScan ESBL confirmation panel (Dade Behring, Tokyo, Japan) for the detection of eight Enterobacteriaceae-producing extended-spectrum beta-lactamases (ESBL) species. Of 137 bacterial strains isolated from patients in 32 hospitals in the Kinki area of Japan, 91 produced ESBL and comprised 60 bacteria (of E. coli, K.