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Sir,

We read with great interest the study published by Mushtaq et al.1 about the performance of Oxoid M.I.C.Evaluator™ (M.I.C.E.) (Thermo Fisher Scientific, Basingstoke, UK) strips compared with those of the Etest® (AB bioMérieux, Marcy l’Étoile, France) and agar dilution for determination of MICs using the BSAC guidelines. We recently had the opportunity to carry out a similar study that comparatively evaluated the performance of this new gradient strip with those of the Etest and broth microdilution (BMD) according to CLSI (formerly NCCLS) guidelines.2,3

A total of 160 clinical bacterial isolates were randomly selected and 38 antimicrobial/organism combinations were tested by each method as follows (see Table 1): Pseudomonas aeruginosa (n = 20) and Acinetobacter spp. (n = 20) (non-fermenters group; gentamicin, ciprofloxacin and imipenem); Klebsiella pneumoniae (n = 20) and Escherichia coli (n = 20) (Enterobacteriaceae group; ampicillin, amoxicillin/clavulanic acid, gentamicin, ciprofloxacin, cefotaxime and imipenem); Staphylococcus aureus (n = 20) and coagulase-negative Staphylococcus (n = 20) (staphylococci group; ciprofloxacin, erythromycin, gentamicin, oxacillin, linezolid and vancomycin); and Enterococcus faecalis (n = 20) and Enterococcus faecium (n = 20) [enterococci group; ampicillin, gentamicin high level (HL), linezolid and vancomycin]. Only a single isolate per patient was evaluated. E. coli ATCC™ 25922, P. aeruginosa ATCC™ 27853, S. aureus ATCC™ 29213 and E. faecium ATCC™ 29212 were tested as quality control strains and MIC results were within the expected ranges. The MICs were read independently by three observers.

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