Dear colleagues,
The following news items have been published in the previous month:
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30 Jun 2024:
Updated expert rules
Expert rules updated for Enterobacterales and Enterococcus.
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25 Jun 2024:
Bacillus anthracis breakpoints published in CMI
European multi-centre study to establish MIC and zone diameter epidemiological cut-off values for Bacillus anthracis
Flavia Dematheis, Viviana Manzulli, Gregor Grass, Erika
Matuschek, Daniela Jacob, Falk Melzer, Mandy Elschner, Agnieszka
Kedrak-Jablonska, Sylwia Budniak, Marcella Mori, Tiziano
Fancello, Roland Grunow, Gunnar Kahlmeter, Domenico Galante, Sabine
Zange. Clin Microbiol Infect 2024 Jun 7:S1198-743X(24)00256-8. DOI: 10.1016/j.cmi.2024.05.019
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23 Jun 2024:
The EUCAST subcommittee on phage susceptibility testing formed
A webpage dedicated to the EUCAST ad hoc subcommittee on phage susceptibility testing is under construction.
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18 Jun 2024:
The EUCAST subcommittee on the role of WGS in AST re-established
The EUCAST subcommittee on the role of whole genome sequencing in antimicrobial susceptibility testing has been re-established, under the leadership of Antonio Oliver (Spain).
These are the findings and the conclusions of the previous subcommittee, published in 2017 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmi.2016.11.012):
Whole genome sequencing (WGS) offers the potential to predict
antimicrobial susceptibility from a single assay. The European Committee
on Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing established a subcommittee to
review the current development status of WGS for bacterial antimicrobial
susceptibility testing (AST).
The published evidence for using WGS as a tool to infer antimicrobial
susceptibility accurately is currently either poor or non-existent and
the evidence / knowledge base requires significant expansion. The
primary comparators for assessing genotypic–phenotypic concordance from
WGS data should be changed to epidemiological cut-off values in order to
improve differentiation of wild-type from non-wild-type isolates
(harbouring an acquired resistance). Clinical breakpoints should be a
secondary comparator. This assessment will reveal whether genetic
predictions could also be used to guide clinical decision making.
Internationally agreed principles and quality control (QC) metrics will
facilitate early harmonization of analytical approaches and interpretive
criteria for WGS-based predictive
AST. Only data sets that pass agreed QC metrics should be used in AST
predictions. Minimum performance standards should exist and comparative
accuracies across different WGS laboratories and processes should be
measured. To facilitate comparisons, a single public database of all
known resistance loci should be established, regularly updated and
strictly curated using minimum standards for the inclusion of resistance
loci. For most bacterial species the major limitations to widespread
adoption for WGS-based AST in clinical laboratories remain the current
high-cost and limited speed of inferring antimicrobial susceptibility
from WGS data as well as the dependency on previous culture because
analysis directly on specimens remains challenging.
For most bacterial species there is currently insufficient evidence
to support the use of WGS-inferred AST to guide clinical decision
making. WGS-AST should be a funding priority if it is to become a rival
to phenotypic AST. This report will be updated as the available evidence
increases./ 2017
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
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