TY - JOUR
T1 - Epidemiological interpretation of antibiotic resistance studies - What are we missing?
AU - Schwaber, Mitchell J.
AU - De-Medina, Tali
AU - Carmeli, Yehuda
PY - 2004/12
Y1 - 2004/12
N2 - Antimicrobial resistance is an emerging public-health threat. Studies of the relationship between antibiotic use and resistance, as well as surveillance programmes, examine changes in the proportion of isolates that are resistant. Although proportions are helpful to the clinician prescribing empirical therapy, proportion-based analyses can be misleading to the public-health professional as they can yield biased estimates. Proportions do not adequately reflect the burden of resistance, a measure often of interest in public health. A more appropriate measure of this burden is the rate of isolation of resistant organisms, that is, the absolute number of resistant isolates in a population over time.
AB - Antimicrobial resistance is an emerging public-health threat. Studies of the relationship between antibiotic use and resistance, as well as surveillance programmes, examine changes in the proportion of isolates that are resistant. Although proportions are helpful to the clinician prescribing empirical therapy, proportion-based analyses can be misleading to the public-health professional as they can yield biased estimates. Proportions do not adequately reflect the burden of resistance, a measure often of interest in public health. A more appropriate measure of this burden is the rate of isolation of resistant organisms, that is, the absolute number of resistant isolates in a population over time.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=9444262003&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/nrmicro1047
DO - 10.1038/nrmicro1047
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C2 - 15550943
AN - SCOPUS:9444262003
SN - 1740-1526
VL - 2
SP - 979
EP - 983
JO - Nature Reviews Microbiology
JF - Nature Reviews Microbiology
IS - 12
ER -