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. 2015 Mar 23;10(3):e0123690.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0123690. eCollection 2015.

The carbapenem inactivation method (CIM), a simple and low-cost alternative for the Carba NP test to assess phenotypic carbapenemase activity in gram-negative rods

Kim van der Zwaluw  1 , Angela de Haan  1 , Gerlinde N Pluister  1 , Hester J Bootsma  1 , Albert J de Neeling  1 , Leo M Schouls  1
Affiliations

The carbapenem inactivation method (CIM), a simple and low-cost alternative for the Carba NP test to assess phenotypic carbapenemase activity in gram-negative rods

Kim van der Zwaluw et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

A new phenotypic test, called the Carbapenem Inactivation Method (CIM), was developed to detect carbapenemase activity in Gram-negative rods within eight hours. This method showed high concordance with results obtained by PCR to detect genes coding for the carbapenemases KPC, NDM, OXA-48, VIM, IMP and OXA-23. It allows reliable detection of carbapenemase activity encoded by various genes in species of Enterobacteriaceae (e.g., Klebsiella pneumoniae, Escherichia coli and Enterobacter cloacae), but also in non-fermenters Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Acinetobacter baumannii. The CIM was shown to be a cost-effective and highly robust phenotypic screening method that can reliably detect carbapenemase activity.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Schematic of the CIM.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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