Medical Xpress reported on the recent findings from NHS England’s Quality Premium intervention on antimicrobial resistance (AMR), a program that rewards groups of general practitioners for improving quality of care, including reducing the over-prescription of antibiotics in primary care.
In England, it is estimated that over 70% of antibiotics are prescribed in primary care, many of which are considered inappropriate and can lead to an increased chance of bacteria evolving and becoming resistant. Initiatives have been put in place to educate practitioners to follow evidence-based prescribing because AMR is a substantial and growing global health concern that is responsible for nearly 700,000 deaths a year.
In this study, The Global Digital Health unit team at Imperial College London linked data from 6,882 English general practices with Public Health England’s (PHE) national surveillance of bacterial infections over a six-year period. The researchers focused on the prescribing of five common antibiotics and analyzed resistance trends in Escherichia coli (E. coli) infections, which are responsible for more than half of the drug-resistant bacterial blood stream infections in the UK.
Researchers found that “while the intervention achieved a downward step change in antibiotic prescribing, it only led to a modest reduction in antibiotic resistant infections.” Dr. Céire Costelloe, Reader and Director of the Global Digital Health Unit at Imperial College London, commented that “resistance among E. coli causing bacteraemia remains on an upward trajectory” and “highlights the fact that a single intervention alone is not enough to tackle the growing threat of AMR.”
Co-author Professor Azeem Majeed, GP, and Head of the Department of Primary Care and Public Health, Imperial College London, stated that “global, coordinated efforts and new drugs to treat resistant infections” are needed to tackle the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance.
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