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Etest


Etest, (previously known as Epsilometer test) manufactured by bioMérieux, is a manual in vitro diagnostic device used by laboratories to determine the MIC (Minimum Inhibitory Concentration) and whether or not a specific strain of bacterium or fungus is susceptible to the action of a specific antimicrobial. This type of test is most commonly used in healthcare settings to help guiding physicians in treatment of patients by indicating what concentration of antimicrobial would successfully treat an infection.

The Etest principle was first described in 1988 and was introduced commercially in 1991 by AB BIODISK. AES Chemunex acquired AB BIODISK in 2008 and BioMerieux acquired AES in 2013 continues to manufacture and market this product range under the name Etest.

During the 1950s, Hans Ericsson (Professor of microbiology at the Karolinska Hospital and Karolinska Institute, Stockholm), the scientific founder of AB BIODISK, developed a method to standardize the disc diffusion method and to improve its reproducibility and reliability for clinical susceptibility predictions. The inhibition zone sizes from disc test results were compared to Minimum Inhibitory Concentration (MIC) values based on the reference agar dilution procedure. The correlation between zone sizes and MIC values was then assessed using regression analysis and regression lines were used for extrapolating zone interpretive limits that corresponded to the MIC breakpoint values that defined susceptible, intermediate and resistant categorical results.

Etest was first presented at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC) in Los Angeles in 1988 as a novel gradient concept for MIC determinations. In September 1991, Etest was launched globally as a MIC product after receiving the USA Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance.

Etest applications include many groups of fastidious organisms, fungi (yeast and mould) and mycobacteria as well as detecting various mechanisms of resistance and MIC testing of key antibiotics with critical specimens e.g. blood and cerebral spinal fluid (CSF).

Etest is a quantitative technique for determining the antimicrobial susceptibility (AST) and MIC (in µg/mL) of Gram-negative and Gram-positive aerobic bacteria such as Enterobacteriaceae, Pseudomonas, Staphylococcus, and Enterococcus species and fastidious bacteria, such as anaerobes, N. gonorrhoeae, S. pneumoniae, Streptococcus and Haemophilius species.

Etest is a ‘ready-to-use’ , inert and non poreus plastic reagent strip with a predefined gradient of antibiotic, covering a continuous concentration range, for the determination of precise MIC values of a wide range of antimicrobial agents against different organism groups.


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