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Updated: Jun 19, 2026
Culture Methods to Determine the Limit of Detection and Survival in Transport Media of Campylobacter Jejuni in Human Fecal Specimens
Published on: March 10, 2020
Comparison of disc diffusion and epsilometer (E-test) testing techniques to determine antimicrobial susceptibility of
K McGill1, L Kelly, R H Madden
1Centre for Food Safety, School of Agriculture, Food Science and Veterinary Medicine, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland. kevina.mcgill@ucd.ie
Abstract:
The antibiotic resistance profiles of 75 Campylobacter isolates of food and human clinical origin was determined by two agar diffusion susceptibility methods; disc diffusion and epsilometer-test (E-test). The most common therapeutic antimicrobials, erythromycin, ciprofloxacin and tetracycline were studied, along with chloramphenicol, ampicillin and naladixic acid. The resistance observed for each antimicrobial, as determined by both of methods, were statistically compared using Fisher two-tailed analysis. Of the six antimicrobials studied only two were shown to have statistically different patterns when resistance was compared by disc diffusion and E-test. The percentage of isolates resistant to clinically relevant antimicrobials using both techniques ranged from 6.6 to 21.3% for erythromycin, 25.3-26.6% for tetracycline and 33.3-36.0% for ciprofloxacin. The prevalence of multi-drug resistant (MDR) campylobacters (isolates resistant to 2 or more antimicrobials) for both disc diffusion and E-test was 44%. It can be concluded that, for four of the six antimicrobials assessed, antimicrobial resistance prevalences could be equally determined by either of the methods studied.
