This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Max Salfinger, MD
New York State Department of Health Albany

JAMA. 1995;273(12):917.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

In Reply.

—Pyrazinamide is one of the most important drugs in modern chemotherapy of tuberculosis; its inclusion in treatment regimens has made possible the shortening of therapy to 6 months. The recent increase in tuberculosis with several nosocomial outbreaks of multidrug-resistant strains has challenged the public health system. New recommendations by the CDC and the American Thoracic Society^1,2 require in vitro drug susceptibility testing of M tuberculosis isolates for all five first-line drugs (pyrazinamide included) from all patients and reporting of these results to the local health department.

Unfortunately, testing the susceptibility of tubercle bacilli to pyrazinamide is problematic since pyrazinamide is active only at an acid pH. After a series of reports regarding susceptibility testing (available from the author on request), 100 µg of pyrazinamide per milliliter at pH 6.0 is now the recommended test concentration.³

The results of Dr Hewlett and coworkers are so unexpectedly divergent . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?