Antimicrobial Testing (AMT)

Dear Colleagues,

Antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) can be dated as early as 1924, when Dr. Fleming introduced the ditch plate technique for evaluation of antimicrobial qualities of antiseptic solutions. Since then, scientists have continued to work on advancements and evaluations of AST. Antimicrobial testing (AMT) is the world’s most widely used category of techniques, used daily by thousands of healthcare centers globally, to determine the potential effectiveness of specific antimicrobial agents on microorganisms, notably, the disk diffusion (Kirby–Bauer) method and broth dilution technique. Based on the AMT finding, it is predicted which antimicrobial will inhibit the growth of a microorganism causing a specific infection, and which antimicrobial therapy will be successful. There are lots of variations in susceptibility and resistance patterns globally, largely dependent on the regional practices of antimicrobial therapy, which not only amaze clinicians, microbiologists, and laboratory medicine scientists but challenge epidemiologists, public health personnel, and the pharmaceutical industry. As rapid diagnostic testing is pivotal in initiating specific antimicrobial therapy (and to avert development of resistance), recently, biomedical engineers and scientists have developed alternative, novel, rapid AST techniques, such as microfluidic-based optical, spectroscopy, electrochemical, piezoelectric plate sensor AST, next-generation sequencing, and many more. Additionally, automation in testing is continuously explored to save time and cost associated with in vitro testing and diagnostics.

In this Special Issue of Microorganisms, we invite original contributions (that are unpublished and not under consideration elsewhere) of research and reviews focusing on novel findings on and interpretations and significance of all different AST methods, novel strategies to determine antimicrobial resistance, unusual AST patterns of common or rare pathogens, comparison of AMT methods, in vitro synergism, antimicrobial mechanism-based studies involving AST (both phenotypic and genotypic methods), antimicrobial testing and efficacy in biofilms, novel qualitative and quantitative antimicrobial testing of natural products, synthetic molecules, and antimicrobial nanoparticles.

Prof. Dr. Suresh Joshi
Guest Editor

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