AMR Surveillance using Innovative Sampling

A JPIAMR project aiming to develop an antimicrobial resistance (AMR) surveillance strategy in a One Health context, which is applicable in high-, middle-, and low-income countries.

OASIS moves from conventionally estimating AMR prevalence to classifying populations/settings as having a “high” or “low” AMR prevalence, by applying a Lot Quality Assurance Sampling approach.

Coordination: Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development

Project information

OASIS aims to develop an antimicrobial resistance (AMR) surveillance strategy in a One Health context, and applicable in high-, middle-, and low-income countries. The proposed strategy challenges the strong reliance on laboratory-based AMR surveillance for meeting objectives of the Global Action Plan on AMR .

Inappropriate use of antibiotics is a key driver for AMR. Antimicrobial stewardship programmes aim at reducing inappropriate use by promoting evidence-based prescribing of antimicrobial drugs. Knowledge of the prevalence of AMR is central to this evidence base, and therefore for the design and implementation of antimicrobial stewardship programmes. The AMR prevalence estimates in the human and veterinary domains suffer from the same drawbacks: selection bias in isolates submitted for antibiotic susceptibility testing, and absence of locally-relevant information due to aggregated data on (sub-)national level. The required evidence base needs population-based AMR prevalence surveys. However, conventional surveys are time consuming, expensive, and preclude the identification of local variations in AMR prevalence, given the limitations in sample size.

OASIS moves from conventionally estimating AMR prevalence to classifying populations/settings as having a “high” or “low” AMR prevalence, by applying a Lot Quality Assurance Sampling (LQAS) approach. This requires much smaller sample sizes, and is uniquely positioned for population-based AMR surveillance.

The project validates the LQAS-based AMR surveillance approach against conventional AMR prevalence surveys in the veterinary domain for the first time. It additionally provides the evidence that aggregation of LQAS results (which are classifications of “high” or “low” AMR prevalence), can serve as a valid estimate of conventional AMR prevalence survey results (which are prevalence estimations). It is especially this latter validation step that will make LQAS-based AMR surveillance an attractive strategy for the health profession and policy makers alike, as the LQAS-based results provide the required local evidence for appropriate empirical antimicrobial treatment, while the aggregation of these results in a conventional AMR prevalence estimate provides policy makers with a tool for measuring the impact of interventions that are aimed at reducing AMR prevalence at district, regional, or national levels.

OASIS’ implementation research component engages domain-specific stakeholders throughout the project to optimise knowledge utilisation, and facilitate the translation of results into policy.

Meet the Team

Researchers

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Abdoul-Salam Ouedraogo

Professor of Bacteriology and Virology

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Christian Berens

Head of Pathogenomic Workgoup

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Christa Ewers

Professor of Infectious Diseases

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Christian Menge

Professor of Microbiology and Immunology

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Chris Pell

Social Scientist

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Constance Schultsz

Professor of Global Health

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François-Xavier Babin

Director of Diagnostics and Health Systems

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Frank van Leth

Associate Professor of Health Sciences Coordinator

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Laurent Raskine

Medical Microbiologist

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Mounerou Salou

Professor of Bacteriology and Virology

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Timo Homeier-Bachmann

Scientific head of the German animal disease notification system

Project Managers

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Victoria Cristofoli

Project Manager

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Juliane Gebelin

Project Manager

Domains

Human

AMR in patients suspected of urinary tract infections

Veterinary

AMR in pigs and broiler chickens arriving in slaughterhouses

Implementation

Social science studies on LQAS-based AMR surveillance

LQAS

Lot quality Assurance Sampling (LQAS) is an approach that derives from industry, where it is used for a rapid assessment of the quality of goods within a specified batch. The methodology has made its way into the field of Public Health as a rapid assessment tool in program evaluation, e.g vaccination coverage.

The process involves several steps which are depicted in the Figure below

  1. deliminate a population of interest, e.g district or health facility (lot)
  2. draw a random sample of elements from this population (sample)
  3. assess the outcome of interest for each of these elements
  4. classify the population as having a prevalence of the outcome below or above a pre-specified threshold (decision rule)
LQAS process (copyright: FvL 2019).

Within the field of antimicrobial resistance, the outcome refers to the prevelence of micro-organisms resistant for a given antibiotic. The threshold refers to the maximum acceptable prevalence of resistance for an antibiotic still being able to be given as empirical treatment. Whether or not the threshold has been passed is dependent on the used decision rule that is defined with respect to statistical parameters.

The original publication (1929) can be found here.

A directly accessible description (1988) can found here.

The publication of our earlier work that sparked the development of OASIS can be found here

Recent Posts

Dissemination event

Shining light on our activities.

Here we go.....

Kicking off on exciting project.

Recent Publications

Rethinking Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance: A Role for Lot Quality Assurance Sampling.

This is our publication on the feasibility of LQAS for AMR surveillance. The results of this study performed in Indonesia sparked the …

Funders

OASIS is funded in the 9th call (diagnositc and surveillance) of the Joint Programming Initiative on Antimicrobial Resistance ( JPIAMR ), established by the European Commision. JPIAMR is a global collaborative platform and has engaged 28 nations to curb antibiotic resistance (AMR) with a One Health approach. The initiative coordinates national funding to support transnational research and activities within the six priority areas of the shared JPIAMR Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda – therapeutics, diagnostics, surveillance, transmission, environment and interventions.

The following national funding agencies participate in the OASIS project: