Organization

The EUCAST Subcommittee on MIC distributions and ECOFFs

In 2002, EUCAST launched the concept of gathering large numbers of MIC values to present as aggregated MIC distributions for each species-agent combination and to determine epidemiological cut-off values (ECOFF) on. The distributions are for bacteria and fungi and for antimicrobial agents that are or have been used in human and veterinary medicine. Only MIC distributions that adhered to a set of basic conditions were accepted for aggregation with other distributions (see introductory notes on the EUCAST MIC distribution website (http://mic.eucast.org/Eucast2/).

There are currently more than 29000 MIC distributions in the EUCAST database, which amounts to several million MIC values. An aggregated distribution may consist of over 90000 MIC values (e.g. the aggregated distributions of cefuroxime MICs for Escherichia coli and of vancomycin MICs for Staphylococcus aureus). The distributions are presented as tables and as histograms. The MIC distributions are from a wide variety of sources including breakpoint committees, individual researchers in human and veterinary medicine, programmes for the surveillance of antimicrobial resistance in humans and animals and EUCAST development projects, or have been put together by pharmaceutical companies during programmes for the development of new agents.

In 2015 EUCAST decided to form a subcommittee to determine rules for MIC distributions (import and aggregation) and for determining ECOFFs. It was also decided to appoint curators of the database.

A position document was developed during 2016 and was published as an SOP (No 10) in 2017.

 

Chairperson Gunnar Kahlmeter

Secretary John Turnidge.