Agar disk elution method for susceptibility testing of Mycobacterium marinum and Mycobacterium fortuitum complex to sulfonamides and antibiotics.

An agar disk elution method using round well plates, supplemented Mueller-Hinton agar, and commercial drug disks is described for susceptibility testing of Mycobacterium marinum and the rapidly growing mycobacteria to antibiotics and sulfonamides. By this method, 14 of 14 strains of M. marinum were susceptible to rifampin, doxycycline, minocycline, and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole. Identical results were obtained with Middlebrook 7H10 agar and drugs prepared from standard powders. With 58 isolates of Mycobacterium fortuitum and Mycobacterium chelonei, this method had a 92% correlation with broth minimal inhibitory concentration determinations for cefoxitin and greater than 98% for doxycycline, kanamycin, amikacin, and the sulfonamides. Sixty-nine percent of isolates of M. chelonei susceptible to amikacin on supplemented Mueller-Hinton agar were resistant on 7H10 agar, and 15 of 16 M. chelonei isolates susceptible to erythromycin in broth were resistant by disk elution when an endpoint of no growth was used with either agar. The agar disk elution method offers a practical method for testing of most antibacterial agents against these mycobacterial species.