A global map of antimicrobial resistance in animals raised for food
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1
ETH Zürich, Switzerland
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2
Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy, United States
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3
Free University of Brussels, Belgium
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4
Princeton University, United States
Background: Since the 1950s, the global increase in demand for meat and dairy has driven the use of antimicrobial drugs in agriculture. This practice has led to the development of antimicrobial resistance in animals and food products, with potentially harmful consequence for agricultural productivity, and human health. In low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), trends in AMR are poorly documented, and as a consequence the AMR status of LMICs remain largely unknow. On one hand, as in high-income countries, antimicrobials are used in LMICs to treat animals and as surrogates for poor hygiene on farms. AMR levels in LMICs could thus be exacerbated by lower biosecurity, less nutritious feed, and looser regulations on veterinary drugs. On the other hand, in LMICs, AMR levels may also be reduced by lower meat consumption and the very limited access to veterinary drugs in rural areas. Few works have attempted to disentangle the effect of those factors, and thus far, expert opinion has prevailed over an evidence-based assessment of the AMR status of LMICs. In this context, point prevalence surveys can be used as surrogates to systematic surveillance to provide a baseline of AMR levels, and guide interventions in LMICs.
We extracted twelve thousand resistance rates from point prevalence surveys conducted in LMICs on common foodborne pathogens. Data on AMR was identified for Escherichia coli, non-Typhoidal Salmonella, Campylobacter spp., and Staphylococcus aureus. Resistance rates were manually extracted and curated across all the studies in a public database named RESBANK. We accounted for potential differences in accuracy of antimicrobial susceptibility testing between regions using the WHO External Quality Control System, as well as for temporal revisions of the breakpoints used for susceptibility testing. For each study, we calculated the proportion of drugs tested with resistance levels higher than 50% (P50), and used ensemble geospatial modelling (stacked generalization) to produced global maps of P50, at 10Km resolution.
From 2000 to 2018, the proportion of antimicrobials with resistance higher than 50% increased twofold in chickens, and threefold in pigs. China, Northeast and South India represented the largest hotspots of resistance, while new hotspots are emerging in Central India, Brazil, and Kenya. Our maps suggest that worldwide a substantial proportion of chicken, cattle and pigs are raised in hotspots of AMR in 2013.
Interpretations: We report a rapid but geographically heterogenous increase of AMR in animals in LMICs. These trends call for urgent actions to preserve the efficacy of existing drugs used in animal agriculture, limit the future economic burden of AMR on farmers. Our global maps of AMR provide a baseline to outline priorities for interventions in LMICs, and monitor their efficacy in the future.
Acknowledgements
The Swiss National Science Foundation
The Branco Weiss Foundation
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The Princeton University Health Ggand Challenges Program
Keywords:
maps,
Species distribution models (SDM),
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR),
Low and Middle Income Countries,
Kriging
Conference:
GeoVet 2019. Novel spatio-temporal approaches in the era of Big Data, Davis, United States, 8 Oct - 10 Oct, 2019.
Presentation Type:
Regular oral presentation
Topic:
Spatio-temporal surveillance and modeling approaches
Citation:
Van Boeckel
TP,
Do Couto Pires
J,
Zhao
C,
Silvester
R,
Gilbert
M,
Bonhoeffer
S,
Laxminarayan
R and
Song
J
(2019). A global map of antimicrobial resistance in animals raised for food.
Front. Vet. Sci.
Conference Abstract:
GeoVet 2019. Novel spatio-temporal approaches in the era of Big Data.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fvets.2019.05.00092
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Received:
09 Jun 2019;
Published Online:
27 Sep 2019.
*
Correspondence:
Prof. Thomas P Van Boeckel, ETH Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland, thomas.vanboeckel@env.ethz.ch