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Recommendations for Local Susceptibility Testing

CDC recommends that local health laboratories with the capacity to perform antimicrobial susceptibility testing on N. gonorrhoeae isolates routinely test for susceptibility to antimicrobials used locally for gonorrhea treatment (e.g., a fluoroquinolone, cefixime or ceftriaxone, azithromycin, and spectinomycin).

If your laboratory is currently performing antimicrobial susceptibility testing on N. gonorrhoeae, the Gonorrhea Molecular Epidemiology Laboratory at CDC provides a good control strain panel. The commercially available strains and the American Type Culture Collection (ATCC) strains for gonorrhea do not cover fluoroquinolone resistance or high minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) to azithromycin and cephalosporins, so any Laboratory that is performing gonorrhea susceptibility testing would benefit from having the CDC control strains. If you are interested in receiving the strains, please contact GISP at gispinfo.cdc.gov.  The document that accompanies these strains is available here: B88- Neisseria gonorrhoeae reference strains for antimicrobial susceptibility testing .

CDC requests reports of treatment failures or resistant gonococcal isolates from clinicians or laboratories [National Center for HIV, STD and TB Prevention, Division of STD Prevention, telephone [404] 639-8373, email GISP Coordinator (gispinfo@cdc.gov)]. 

Above recommendation excerpted from Fluoroquinolone-Resistance in Neisseria gonorrhoeae, Hawaii, 1999, and Decreased Susceptibility to Azithromycin in N. gonorrhoeae, Missouri, 1999 - MMWR. 22 September 2000