How health care professionals can optimise diagnostics and help prevent antimicrobial resistance (AMR)
This blog is from Dr Smita Kapadia, Consultant in Communicable Disease Control at UKHSA, East of England.
I'm Dr Smita Kapadia, Consultant in Communicable Disease Control at UKHSA, East of England.
As we mark World Antimicrobial Resistance Week, I would like to share information on the crucial role of diagnostics in antimicrobial stewardship, and how optimizing diagnostics can control the problem of antimicrobial resistance (AMR)
Antimicrobial resistance is a pressing global health challenge. It threatens the effectiveness of many common antibiotics, making infections harder to treat, leading to longer hospital stays, higher medical costs, and increased mortality. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), if left unaddressed, AMR could cause 10 million deaths annually by 2050, surpassing cancer as a leading cause of death.
The Independent Review on Antimicrobial Resistance by Jim O'Neill in 2016, highlighted the scale of the problem and made a compelling case for governments and healthcare systems to support innovative rapid diagnostics.
Accurate and easy to access diagnostic tests are central to combating AMR
As health care professional here are some of the ways you can help:
- Ensuring the appropriate use of antibiotics - One of the main contributors to AMR is the use of antibiotics, often when they are not necessary. For example, using antibiotics to treat viral infections, such as common colds. With better and accessible diagnostic tools, healthcare professionals would be able to quickly identify whether an infection is bacterial or viral. This would support appropriate prescribing.
- Targeting treatment - Once a pathogen is identified, this can enable more targeted treatment, rather than the use of broad-spectrum antibiotics that may be ineffective or contribute to resistance. Through techniques such as culture and sensitivity testing, clinicians can identify the most effective antimicrobial agents for the infection. Targeted therapy minimizes the use of antibiotics and helps preserve the effectiveness of existing treatments.
- Enabling early diagnosis - Initiating treatment promptly can save lives and rapid diagnostic tests—such as PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) or lateral flow assays—allow for faster identification of pathogens and resistance markers.
- Improving infection control - Early diagnosis of resistant pathogens can inform isolation procedures and optimize patient placement, helping to prevent outbreaks and minimizing transmission in healthcare settings.
What is being done to optimize diagnostics and improve access
The current National Action Plan (2024 to 2029) has a strong focus on reducing unnecessary antimicrobial prescriptions. Making clinical decision aids available alongside rapid and point of care diagnostic tools will enable the right antimicrobials to be prescribed at the right time.
Significant efforts are being made to improve blood culture pathways, validate point of care testing such as CRP, novel approaches to testing antimicrobial susceptibilities and incorporating diagnostic stewardship into antimicrobial stewardship programmes
Actions need to be taken at a local, national and global level.
Partnership and joined up work across the public sector, regulators, academia, and industry is vital to enable funding, improving access to reduce inequalities and to promote research.
A multi-pronged collaborative approach would be key to controlling this global problem.