The changes in susceptibilities of Bacteroides fragilis group strains isolated in our hospital from 1997 to 2006 were studied. A total of 1,343 clinical strains were included. The study showed differences in the resistance rates in the different species of the group. Increasing resistance to clindamycin and moxifloxacin was observed. Susceptibility to imipenem, piperacillin-tazobactam, and metronidazole remained unchanged.Members of the Bacteroides fragilis group can cause infections as serious as intra-abdominal infection, postoperative wound infection, and bacteremia. An increase in the mean incidence of anaerobic bacteremia has recently been noted by Lassmann et al. (9), with the most commonly isolated organisms being those of the B. fragilis group. Over the past 20 years, geographic variations and increasing resistance of this group to several of the traditionally used antimicrobial agents and some of the newer -lactam agents have been reported (1,2,6,14,17,18). Periodic monitoring of the susceptibility patterns of these organisms is now recommended. We studied the susceptibilities of B. fragilis group strains isolated in our hospital from 1997 to 2006 to determine changes and to detect resistance trends.(This study was presented at the 47th Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, Chicago, IL, 17 to 20 September 2007).The study included a total of 1,343 B. fragilis group clinical strains isolated in our hospital from 1997 to 2006. Only one isolate per patient was studied to avoid duplication. The isolates were recovered from the following sources: abdomen (45.6%), skin and soft tissue (40.1%), blood (10.3%), genital tract (2.1%), respiratory tract (0.9%), and other sites (0.9%). Species were identified using the Rapid ID 32A system (bioMérieux, Marcy l'Etoile, France). Reference strains B. fragilis ATCC 25285 and B. thetaiotaomicron ATCC 29741 were used as controls. The MICs obtained by testing the quality control strains in parallel with test strains were within the acceptable range indicated by CLSI (formerly the NCCLS) for each antimicrobial agent tested.Susceptibilities were determined by the agar dilution method according to CLSI criteria (10). The following agents were studied: metronidazole, chloramphenicol, clindamycin, cefoxitin, imipenem, amoxicillin-clavulanate, piperacillin-tazobactam, moxifloxacin, and tigecycline (tested since 2000). To calculate antibiotic resistance rates, the CLSI-approved breakpoints (4) were used. The breakpoint for tigecycline resistance used was that established by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.The most frequent species isolated within the group was B. fragilis (62%), followed by B. thetaiotaomicron (13.5%), B. uniformis (7.8%), B. vulgatus (3.5%), B. caccae (3.3%), B. distasonis (3.2%), B. ovatus (3.1%), B. eggerthii (0.6%), B. stercoris (0.5%), B. merdae (0.5%), and Bacteroides spp. (1.8%). There were no significant differences in the distribution of the various species during the study period.MIC ranges, MICs at which 50% and 90% of ...