Antimicrobial susceptibilities of Campylobacter strains isolated from Finnish subjects infected domestically or from those infected abroad

The in vitro susceptibilities of 678 Campylobacter jejuni and Campylobacter coli strains isolated from stool samples of the same number of Finnish subjects were studied. A total of 523 patients, representing inhabitants from throughout Finland, had not traveled abroad within the 2 weeks prior to becoming ill, whereas 155 persons had presumably acquired their infections abroad. The antimicrobial agents studied were erythromycin, ciprofloxacin, levofloxacin, trovafloxacin, and moxifloxacin. The MICs of these antimicrobial agents were determined by the agar dilution method. The growth of all domestic isolates was inhibited by erythromycin at concentrations of 4 mug/ml, and for these isolates the fluoroquinolone MICs at which 90% of isolates are inhibited (MIC(90)s) ranged from 0.06 to 0.5 mug/ml. For the foreign isolates, the erythromycin MIC90 was still low (4 mug/ml), but their susceptibilities to fluoroquinolones were clearly reduced (MIC90s, 8 to 64 mug/ml). Of the four different fluoroquinolones studied, ciprofloxacin was the least active (MIC90, 64 mug/ml).