Our Nuffield Research Placement 2023 students have been investigating micro-organisms that cause infections in humans and the antimicrobial drugs used to treat this.
In particular they have been finding out more about recent pathogens of concern in Scotland. They used data from the Scottish One Health Antimicrobial Use and Antimicrobial Resistance in 2021 Report from Antimicrobial Resistance and Healthcare Associated Infection Scotland.
“The Scottish One Health Antimicrobial Use and Antimicrobial Resistance (SONAAR) Health Protection programme contributes to ARHAI Scotland’s mission to improve the health and wellbeing of the population by reducing the burden of infection and AMR. This is delivered through development of epidemiological evidence on trends in antibiotic use and resistance to inform local and national interventions and initiatives in human and animal health. In line with the One Health approach, this report includes information from 2021 on antimicrobial use and resistance in humans, animals and the environment.”
NHS National Services Scotland
This report details unusual phenotypes identified through the AMR Alerts system in its supplementary information. It gives the name of the micro-organism of concern, the antimicrobial drug that it showed resistance to and the number of isolates in which this was seen. In microbiology, “isolation” is when we separate one strain of microbe from a mix of living microbes and culture it (grow it in a petri dish for example) so that we can identify it. Aleena, Anum, Dylan and Tawfeeq have complied information to tell us more about how infection with these microbes affects the human body and how antimicrobial drugs act against these microbes.
We have worked together to create an interactive human body. Click on the hotspots to find out more about microbes, antimicrobials and us!