scope:

This guideline provides veterinary and aquatic animal disease diagnostic laboratories with currently recommended antimicrobial broth dilution susceptibility testing methods for bacteria isolated from aquatic animals, primarily Group 1 organisms (see Table 1), including criteria for quality control testing with two quality control strains.

The document also provides tables outlining antimicrobial agents used in global aquaculture, methods for preparing stock solutions and dilutions of antimicrobial agents, and a list of bacteria pathogenic to fish.

We have not addressed interpretive criteria in this guideline. Such criteria must be established using pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic data, in vitro susceptibility testing data, and clinical efficacy data. Developing interpretive criteria was beyond the scope of this document. As more aquatic animal-specific information becomes available, this document, and CLSI document M42-Methods for Antimicrobial Disk Susceptibility Testing of Bacteria Isolated From Aquatic Animals, will be revised to incorporate those data.