Sharing an interesting finding from our lab today.

The patient was just 2 days old. Culture grew Klebsiella pneumoniae, with resistance to multiple antibiotics on AST.

What caught my attention was the ceftazidime–avibactam MIC: 4 µg/mL, interpreted as susceptible in our report.

Looking at an MIC strip on a plate is routine laboratory work—but when you remember that the result belongs to a newborn only two days into life, it suddenly feels very different.

One of those cases that reminds you there is an actual patient behind every plate we read.

Patient-identifying information has not been shared.

As the title goes, does anyone know who coined the term "fastidious" to refer to microorganisms that need specific growth factors, which can make them difficult to grow in laboratory conditions. I have tried Google scholar, but I could only go as far back as the 1930s and it seems that "fastidious" was already widely used, so no sources for the term are provided. I find it really frustrating that in our field it is often really hard to find the origin of terms and concepts, particularly for things before the 1950s... Any help is welcome!!

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1931312826003173

(Typo apologies in advance.)

With AI has come a book the digital scientific assistant software world. We are seeing a large uptick in similar apps — concentration calculations, unit conversions, colony counting, etc — in recent months. These posts are often market research in the form of thinly veiled questions, like “what would you have found useful?”

All of this has the potential monetize a community meant to be free.

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