Minimal bactericidal concentration test

Although not performed routinely during the clinical man- agement of patients with infections, data from certain laboratory tests (e.g., minimal bactericidal concentration tests, timed-kill tests, post-antibiotic-effect tests, and antimicrobial combination testing) are important for the clinician to understand because they help to determine an antimicrobial s pharmacodynamic properties. 

In certain infections (e.g., meningitis and endocarditis), the bactericidal (killing) activity may be more predictive of a favorable infection outcome than the MIC. The minimal bactericidal concentration (MBC) can performed in conjunction with the broth microtiter MIC test by taking aliquots of broth from microtiter weUs that... 

Minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) and the minimal bactericidal concentration (MBC) tests are used often to determine the activity of the drug on certain species of bacteria. MIC is defined as the lowest concentration of antimicrobial or drug that will inhibit the visible growth of bacteria after overnight incubation (Levison, 2004), while MBC is the lowest concentration of antibacterial agent required to kill a particular bacterium (Wiegand et al., 2008). 

FIGURE 103-7. Killing curve depicting the effect of concentration on antibiotic bactericidal activity. CPU = colony-forming units MIC = minimal Inhibitory concentration. 0.25-64 times the MIC the organism tested was P. aeruginosa ATCC 27853. (From ref 51.)... 

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