April 03, 2023
In a new article published in The Lancet Planetary Health, One Health Trust researchers and colleagues used publicly available resistance data–including the one published on ResistanceMap–to explore the relationships between socioeconomic, anthropogenic, and environmental factors and country-level AMR rates in humans and food-producing animals. They found significant positive associations between animal antimicrobial consumption and AMR in food-producing animals and between human antimicrobial consumption and AMR in WHO critical and high priority pathogens. Furthermore, antimicrobial consumption in animals was significantly associated with AMR in WHO critical priority pathogens in humans, while human antimicrobial consumption was significantly linked with AMR rates in animals. The researchers also identified significant associations between several socioeconomic factors, including increased mortality due to unsafe water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) conditions; cardiovascular complications; and human AMR. These findings are in concordance with previous reports that link lower socioeconomic status with higher rates of AMR in humans, likely caused by increased transmission of resistant pathogens due to poor sanitation and limited access to healthcare.
Find the article, “Global antimicrobial-resistance drivers: an ecological country-level study at the human–animal interface” here.