Hello all!
Its my turn to share my SIP with you all Finally! Attachment is rather fun here and yup, i had learned alot of things from the staff working here. Till now, it has been a good experience. =)
In this hospital, there are alot of department. But for the 1st month of my attachment here, i am attached to the microbiology department, so basically what they do here is to culture and/or use different test to identify the pathogens that are causing infections. In this post, i shall describe one interesting reaction i saw in antibiotic susceptiblity test(which all of us should be very familar to). Susceptiblity test is done here to allow the doctors to know what antibioic to use base on the sensitivity of the strain of the bacteria. The method they make use of is called CDS method(invented by a group of people) to obtain better and more accurate results and reaction.
The method is the same as the one we do in micro lab. (See below)
Image taken from http://web.med.unsw.edu.au/cdstest/GTF_CDS_site/WebPages/HomeLevel/ManualFrames.htm
Usually after a patient's samples being cultured on agar shows significant isolates, it will be tested against beta-lactam antibiotics. Usually, Escherichia coli and Klebsiella especially can be resistant to these anti-biotics.
Beta-lactamase enzyme is a common bacteria resistance mechanism that is able to break down beta-lactam ring of penicillin-like drugs. They are able to hydrolyse antibiotics like CTX, AMC and CAZ. What lactamase enzymes do is that they break down the structural ring and make the molecules's anti-bacteria properties no longer functional. Therefore, when key-hole reaction can be seen, it shows that this bacteria strain is resistant to these antibiotics. The expression of the enzyme differs depending on the genetic control of the beta-lactamase production. TEM-1, TEM 2 and SHV-1 are the common plasmid-encoded enzymes that are resistant to penicillin.
The picture above shows Enterobacter being resistant.
So that is about all for this post. Hope that it is not too boring. Smiles =)
Zhenling TG02