A week to raise awareness of antimicrobial resistance phenomena
The World Health Organization organizes every year, from November 18 to 24, a week to raise awareness of the global phenomenon of antimicrobial resistance, particularly to antibiotics. The aim is "to encourage citizens, health workers and decision-makers to adopt best practices to prevent the emergence of antimicrobial resistance and the spread of current resistance" (source: WHO).
The rapid tests co-developed by the LERI
The “Laboratoire d'Etudes et de Recherches en Immunoanalyse” (LERI) has been involved for several years in the development of effective means of detecting antimicrobial-resistant bacterial strains. Together with NG Biotech and a team from AP-HP, LERI has recently developed new tests for the detection of several groups of bacterial enzymes responsible for antibiotic resistance. These test strips have major advantages: simplicity, low cost, sensitivity, speed. They enable the detection of β lactamases in only 15 minutes from a blood culture, where current methods require several hours. Europe made no mistake: since 2018, it has been funding a consortium involving the three entities and other European partners via the EIT Health funding tool (successive projects BL DetecTool and AMR-DetecTool).
Among the tests developed, the CTX-M MULTI test, already marketed by NG-Biotech, allows the simultaneous detection of 5 groups of beta-lactamases (CTX-M of groups 1, 2, 8, 9 and 25), which confer resistance to beta-lactam antibiotics, among the most prescribed antibiotics.
In an article published in Diagnostics, the collaborators validated the CTX-M MULTI test. On the one hand, the test showed 100% sensitivity and specificity on a collection of enterobacteria colonies already characterized (by PCR) for their beta-lactamase content. On the other hand, it was able to detect 98% of the enterobacteria producing a broad spectrum of beta-lactamases (ESBL) identified from colonies or blood cultures at the Bicêtre hospital. The use of this test should therefore improve the management of antimicrobial control, particularly in the hospital environment, by reducing the inappropriate use of beta-lactam antibiotics.
European fundingAMR DetecTool and BL DetecTool benefit from
EIT Health funding.