Antimicrobial susceptibility testing of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (EUCAST document E.DEF 8.1) – Report of the Subcommittee on Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing of Mycobacterium tuberculosis of the European Committee for Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing (EUCAST) of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID)

Abstract

This review describes the methods available for drug susceptibility testing of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The methods have been developed over several decades and are restricted to specialised centres in most European countries, as they are technically demanding, require appropriate isolation facilities and can be difficult to interpret. The absolute concentration, resistance ratio and proportion methods can all give accurate results, provided that they are carefully quality-controlled and standardised. Automated rapid culture and molecular methods have been evaluated at large reference centres and in multicentre collaborations, and perform well for testing susceptibility to most first- and second-line anti-tuberculosis drugs. Accuracy is more important than rapid testing, and this is most reliably achieved if drug susceptibility tests are done in a small number of well-equipped, experienced laboratories that participate and perform well in an international drug susceptibility testing quality assessment scheme. The WHO Supranational Laboratory Quality Control Network offers a global scheme that assesses the ability of participating laboratories to identify isoniazid, rifampicin, ethambutol and streptomycin resistance. Second-line drug resistance testing is currently being standardised, and such testing should only be performed at the national reference laboratories in western and central European countries because of the relatively small number of cases and the concomitant difficulty of maintaining testing proficiency in multiple centres performing small numbers of tests. There is a need to expand international external quality assessment to include second-line drug susceptibility testing.