Laboratory Tests Used To Guide Antimicrobial Therapy

Tests for bactericidal effects of antimicrobial agents: technical performance and clinical relevance.

“…Other clinical instances in which tests for bactericidal activity are recommended by some authorities include bacterial endocarditis (17,47,94), sepsis in the immunocompromised patient (17,94), infections in those unable to mount an immune response (23,47,55), osteomyelitis (47,111), chronically infected implants (47), other types of chronic infections (47), and prediction (or monitoring) of therapeutic efficacy (as with a serum bactericidal titer [SBT] test) in infectious diseases for which there are no therapeutic guidelines (27). MacLowry has recently focused on the problems associated with bactericidal testing, with special reference to the SBT test (66).…”

“…TESTING Clinicians often want to use antimicrobial agents that are bactericidal rather than bacteriostatic, and therefore, some type of standard, reproducible MBC analysis is needed. As noted earlier, the administration of bactericidal antimicrobial agents (along with in vitro therapeutic monitoring) has been suggested for treatment of endocarditis (17,47,94), sepsis in immunocompromised patients (17,23,47,55,94), osteomyelitis (47,111), and other types of chronic infections (47). The use of in vitro monitoring has also been suggested for predicting therapeutic outcome for infectious diseases for which there are no treatment guidelines (27).…”

“…Antimicrobial susceptibility testing is an important task for the diagnostic microbiology laboratory because the results are used by practicing physicians to determine treatment regimens for patients with infections. The microbiology laboratory's approach to susceptibility testing, as it relates to the management of infectious diseases, is the topic of many reports (17,24,37,38,47,49,51,55,60,73,74,94,111). The questions facing clinical microbiologists are how to best perform such in vitro tests and which ones are most useful for guiding therapy for the infected patient (12,98).…”

Dermatologic Disease-Directed Targeted Therapy (D3T2): The Application of Biomarker-Based Precision Medicine for the Personalized Treatment of Skin Conditions—Precision Dermatology

“…Precision medicine utilizes specific molecular biomarkers to assess a single individual's condition or neoplasm, so that a precise-and, optimally, most effective-treatment for that person with disease-directed drugs or tumortargeted agents can be determined [1][2][3]. Disease-directed antibiotic therapy is used to manage patients with infectious conditions [4][5][6][7][8][9]. Similarly, matched targeted therapy is used to treat cancers [10][11][12][13][14].…”