Dear All, Two mid-week notes:
First (and huge!), India’s Ministry of Health issued a notification last week prohibiting the “manufacture, sale and distribution of the drug colistin and its formulations for food-producing animals, poultry, aqua farming and animal feed supplements” because such use is “likely to involve risk to human beings.” You can find this on multiple news sources: Here are two: link and link. Wow! A complete and total ban is an impressive step.
Second, CDC has released its 2018 update on antibiotic use in the US (link). The new report highlights new antibiotic stewardship data, programs, and resources since the July 2017 report. Selected points:
- Outpatient antibiotics: Even when antibiotics are needed, prescribers often favor drugs that may be less effective and carry more risk over more targeted first-line drugs recommended by national guidelines.
- Inpatient antibiotics: Use of the most powerful antibiotics increased significantly from 2006 to 2012, by nearly 40 percent for carbapenems and more than 30 percent for vancomycin.
- Top-line summary (and no surprise!): The United States has made some progress in improving antibiotic prescribing and use in human health, but many opportunities remain.
This is encouraging to see. The only build I’d offer on the report is that I wish it had said more about using vaccines to reduce antibiotic use. Vaccines don’t cover things like UTI, but we should be encouraging them where they are relevant. For further background, you could start with the Feb 2016 paper from the UK AMR Review (link) or this 2016 paper by Utt & Wells (link).
One step at a time, we are making progress. Onward! –jr
John H. Rex, MD | Chief Medical Officer, F2G Ltd. | Expert-in-Residence, Wellcome Trust. Follow me on Twitter: @JohnRex_NewAbx. See past newsletters and subscribe for the future: https://13.43.35.2/blog/
Upcoming meetings of interest to the AMR community:
- [Mark your calendar now!] 3-6 Sep 2019 (Boston). Annual ASM-ESCMID Conference on Antibiotic Development. The Bootcamp series will continue on 3 Sep with main meeting on 4-6 Sep. Mark your calendar now and check back here for details.
- 6 Sep 2019 (Cambridge): CeBIL Annual Symposium 2019: Legal Innovation to Support the Development of Anti-Microbial Drugs. For more details and to register, go here.
- 6-8 Sep 2019 (Bilbao, Spain): 5th ESCMID conference on Vaccines. Check back here for details.
- 10 Sep 2019 (webinar, 17:00-18:30 CEST): REVIVE webinar entitled “Models for antimicrobial R&D: Advanced and complex in vivo models for infectious disease research.” Go here to register.
- 3 Oct 2019 (webinar, 17:00-18:30 CEST): REVIVE webinar entitled “Natural product antibiotics: from traditional screening to novel discovery approaches.” Go here to register.
- 2-6 Oct 2019 (Washington, DC): IDSA’s annual IDWeek meeting.
- 19-27 Oct 2019 (Annecy, France): International Course on Antibiotics and Resistance (ICARe) – A soup-to-nuts intensive residential training program on all things AMR, especially R&D for new antibiotics. See this link for details.
- 19 Nov 2019 (London): BSAC seminar entitled “Into clinical practice: Meeting the challenges of Gram-negative infection management”. A one-day conference on treatments for Gram-negative infections. Go here for details.
- 28-29 Nov 2019 (Birmingham, UK): BSAC workshop entitled “ARM (Antibiotic Resistance & Mechanisms)”. This meeting is a research forum for UK-based researchers at all levels, including PhD students and technicians. Go here for details.
- 16-18 Dec 2019 (Bangkok, Thailand): 3rd International Symposium on Alternatives to Antibiotics in Animal Production. Go here for details: https://www.ars.usda.gov/alternativestoantibiotics/
- 21 Jan 2020 (London): BSAC’s 2nd Antimicrobial Chemotherapy Conference – An ABC for everyone involved in developing new antimicrobials. Go here for details.
- 1-6 Mar 2020 (Il Ciocco, Tuscany, Italy): GRC on Antibacterial Discovery and Development: “Now is the time to re-boot antibiotic R&D before it’s too little, too late.” Go here for details.
- 12-13 Mar 2020 (Berlin?): BEAM-, Novo REPAIR-, CARB-X-, DZIF-, ND4BB-, ENABLE-supported (among a long list!) Conference on Novel Antimicrobials and AMR Diagnostics. Final location is TBD, details will appear here, and you should mark your calendar now.
- 16-17 Mar 2020 (London): BSAC Spring Conference entitled: “Bridging the gap between science, policy and effective antimicrobial use.” Go here for details.
- 18-21 Apr 2020 (Paris): Annual ECCMID meeting (#30)
- 25-30 May 2020 (Rotterdam), Annual ESPID meeting (European Society for Pediatric ID, #38)
- 10-13 Apr 2021 (Vienna): Annual ECCMID meeting (#31)