대한임상미생물학회

EUCAST news and updates

Dear colleagues,

The following news items have been published in the previous month:

• 30 Sep 2023:  Consultation on proposed changes in the 2024 (v 14.0) breakpoint table
  

  In preparation for next year´s table (EUCAST Breakpoint Table 14.0, 2024), EUCAST aims to institute several changes as listed below. Each change is minor but may still have unforeseen consequences in individual laboratories. If you foresee a problem, we would like to know about it. Use the form on the consultation web-page. 

   

  1. Changing the current breakpoint for S. aureus and ciprofloxacin is 0.001/1 mg/L to (0.001/2 mg/L).
  2. Fidaxomicin vs. Clostridioides difficile: EUCAST intends to add fidaxomicin breakpoints 0.5 / 0.5 mg/L to table 14.0. 
  3. Change the benzylpenicillin breakpoint for “other Corynebacteria” so that all Corynebacterium spp share the C. diphtheriae and C. ulcerans penicillin breakpoint of 0.001/1 mg/L. 
  4. Removing the PK/PD tab from the breakpoint table
  5. Imipenem-relebactam vs. Acinetobacter spp. - removing breakpoints and adding a comment
  6. The activity of trimethoprim against Streptococcus agalactiae in urine is controversial (compare with trimethoprim vs. Enterococcus spp) - remove or keep breakpoints.

   

  See the full consultation document here.

   

• 21 Sep 2023:  SOPs 12 and 13 on the development of appropriate disks content published
  

  EUCAST and CLSI have developed joint critera for determining the appropriate disk content (potency) for antibiotic disks used for disk diffusion in methods recommended by EUCAST and CLSI. SOPs 12 and 13 describe procedures for selecting the appropriate disk content and Muller Hinton media for establishing Quality Control (QC) targets and ranges. 

   

• 20 Sep 2023:  Optimised dosing of antibiotics - understanding PK/PD, clinical breakpoints, and therapeutic drug monitoring
  

  Optimised dosing of antibiotics - understanding PK/PD, clinical breakpoints, and therapeutic drug monitoring; Boston, United States, 9 – 10 October 2023. 

   

• 13 Sep 2023:  Cefiderocol susceptibility testing - an update
  

  This is to inform all EUCAST users that the evaluation of cefiderocol susceptibility testing methods is being taken very seriously by EUCAST and still on-going. Our aim is to have a modified recommendation available on the website before the end of this year, hopefully already in October/November. 

   

  Until then, the WARNING  is still valid, which means that the commercially available gradient test and other tests still have problems being looked into.

   

  As part of the warning, there are caveats related to the disk diffusion test. The EUCAST recommendation still holds true provided the caveats related to the choice of media and disks are respected. There is increasing evidence that cefiderocol ATUs can be narrowed in October/November.

   

   

   

   

   

Please visit the EUCAST News page to read more.

All changes to the EUCAST website and to AST recommendations and guidance are listed in a table on the EUCAST website!

With kind regards,
EUCAST