World antimicrobial resistance (AMR) awareness week research conversation special

World AMR Awareness Week (WAAW) takes place between 18 and 24 November every year. It is aimed at:

• raising awareness and understanding of AMR
• promoting best practice
• reducing how drug-resistant infections develop and spread

On 19 November People in Health West of England held a research conversation with researchers from the Health Protection Research Unit in Behavioural Science and Evaluation at University of Bristol researchers. Dr Christie Cabral, Dr Tingting Zhang and Ms Emma Bridgeman from the Bristol Trials Centre talked about their work on AMR and antibiotic overuse.

Dr Cabral discussed her work which focused on understanding and reducing the overuse of antibiotics in the UK and globally. During the session she spoke about antibiotic use in UK children and older people living in care homes.

Dr Cabral said:

“Children and older people are both groups who get a lot of antibiotics. That’s partly because they are prone to illness and partly because of our beliefs around them, and our need to protect them.

“The problem is, it’s quite difficult for people, including doctors, to tell which child will benefit from antibiotics. This uncertainty can lead to overprescribing because the potential consequences of getting it wrong would be disastrous.”

The second presentation, by Dr Zhang, focused on her research on reducing overprescribing in primary care in rural China – STAR China.

Dr Zhang said:

“We designed, implemented and evaluated a complex intervention aimed at reducing antibiotic overprescribing in local health care centres in the Anhui province. We collected feedback and adjusted the intervention five times to accommodate the needs of local practitioners.

“Overall, our participants liked the intervention, although we did have some issues with specific aspects of it. However, we did find that the antibiotic prescribing rate from the intervention group was significantly lower than the control arm.”

Finally, Emma Bridgeman spoke about the RAPID-TEST trial, which her team implemented in 16 GP surgeries around Bristol. During the trial, researchers were using rapid point of care test machines to see if they could reduce the amount of antibiotics prescribed at participating surgeries.

Emma said:

“Our point of care machines checked nose and throat swabs collected from participants for 23 different microbes. Once a swab was taken it only took 45 minutes to run the test. A doctor would then contact the patient and let them know their result, whether anything had been identified and whether any medication was needed.

“We found that our approach was acceptable to both patients and clinicians, possibly because of how familiar everyone had become with having their noses and throats swabbed during the pandemic. We will be publishing the main results of our study in the near future.”

Watch the session to find out more about AMR:

This talk was part of People in Health West of England’s regular research conversation sessions, where members of the public can hear about local research projects and give researchers feedback on their work.

Research conversations are informal and designed to give researchers and public contributors a chance to interact. Public contributors are encouraged to ask questions, learn about, and get involved in projects in their area.

Research conversations will usually take place on Tuesdays or Fridays between 10-11am or 5-6pm.

Get in touch with Carmel McGrath or see our events page for upcoming sessions.