Screening for transferable antibiotic resistance in the clinical laboratory

Abstract

Transferable antibiotic resistance can be detected by a simple, efficient and rapid replicator method. The procedure is readily combined with the agar dilution method of sensitivity testing and permits a clinical laboratory to screen all its significant Gram-negative isolates for resistance factors. The results obtained by this technique are in complete agreement with those yielded by established methods, despite the lack of a ‘pure-culture single colony’ stage in the replicator method. The simplicity and economy of this technique make possible large-scale studies in the ecology and epidemiology of plasmid-mediated antibiotic resistance.