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BEHANDLING-God og treffsikker diagnostikk, behandling og rehabilitering

ABR-Diag: Novel Diagnostic Tool for Antibiotic Resistance

Awarded: NOK 0.17 mill.

The emergence and spread of antibiotic resistant (ABR) bacteria is defined as a global health problem by WHO. An estimated 23,000 patient in US and 25,000 patients in the EU die annually from ABR bacteria. In 2013, there were 1482 cases of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, 117 cases of Vancomycin-resistant enterococci and 506 cases of resistant gonorrhoea reported in Norway with the majority of these cases being registered by physicians. The unnecessary use of antibiotics builds up huge costs and creates health risks. Due to the lack of real-time diagnostics, prescription of the right antibiotic at the right time is not always achieved. Most diagnostics today depend on microbiological culture methods, which require 2 - 4 days to deliver data to physicians. Rapid diagnostics that both identify the pathogen and provide drug susceptibility data in real-time would transform patient management and the current antibiotic resistance crisis. Their application would reach broadly from clinics and primary health care centers to tertiary care hospitals, providing immediate guidance for therapeutic intervention thereby resulting in more prudent and appropriate use of antibiotics. Taking advantage of the advances in genomics, next generation sequencing (NGS), bioinformatics and IT we plan to develop a decision-making tool (ABR-Diag) for the rapid detection and accurate treatment prediction of ABR using NGS. This pre-project will build collaborations with users in the municipal health and care services in selected regions (Hamar, Akershus, Sør-Trondelag and Tromsø) as well as centers of expertise on ABR (ASP and FHI in Oslo and K-RES in Tromsø) to assess the need, feasibility and value potential of ABR-Diag from a cost, time and accuracy perspective over current detection methods. Based on establishment of these collaborations and successful completion of the pre-project and we will seek to fully develop ABR-Diag through Researcher Project funding.

Funding scheme:

BEHANDLING-God og treffsikker diagnostikk, behandling og rehabilitering