Final report from the Committee on Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing, Japanese Society of Chemotherapy, on the agar dilution method (2007).

In 1968, the agar dilution method was developed as an independent Japanese method for measuring the minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) of antimicrobial agents. As this method differed in a few respects from the MIC measurement methods used in other countries, it was revised in 1981, by a committee headed by Susumu Mitsuhashi, and the revised method (Chemotherapy 29:76-79, 1981) has been used since then. In 1979, an agar dilution method for measuring the MIC of anaerobes was developed by a committee chaired by Nozomu Kosakai (Chemotherapy 27:559-561, 1979). In 1990, a committee headed by Sachiko Goto approved a broth microdilution method for nonfastidious bacteria (Chemotherapy 38:102-105, 1990). Later, a committee headed by Atsushi Saito examined media that would be suitable for nonfastidious bacteria and fastidious bacteria, and they endeavored to prepare a broth microdilution method for anaerobic bacteria. In this context, a new broth microdilution method was proposed at the 40th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Chemotherapy (JSC) in Nagoya in 1992, and the proposal was adopted as the standard JSC method after some modification (Chemotherapy 41: 183-189, 1993). The agar dilution method has remained unrevised for approximately 20 years. A proposal to review this method was recently made, and the 2007 Committee on Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing was formed, comprising the JSC members listed below. Under the auspices of this committee, the method revised in 1981 was reviewed in comparison to the international standard method (Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute [CLSI] method).