Dr Samuel J Pearce

Stewardship Solutions #7: World Antimicrobial Awareness Week 2025 Your definitive guide to veterinary antimicrobial stewardship!

World Antimicrobial Awareness Week is nearly over, so I've been collecting resources to help vets with #AntimicrobialStewardship!

#VetMed #AMR #WAAW

open.substack.com/pub/resistan...

Advanced disease modelling shows some gut bacteria can spread as rapidly as viruses Experts can now predict the transmission rate of a bacterial E. coli infection in the same way as they can for viral pandemics, which can help battling treatment-resistant infections in the future.

E. coli can spread as quickly as swine flu, new research reveals. 🦠

For the first time, scientists can predict the rate at which gut bacteria pass between people — a major step towards tackling antibiotic-resistant infections.

Read here ⤵️
sanger.ac.uk/news_item/ad...

Stewardship solutions #6: Surgical solutions All you need to know to prevent, identify and treat surgical site infections

One for the surgeons today. Many vets perform surgery on a regular basis, so understanding infection prevention and antimicrobial prophylaxis is key in prevent surgical site infections and promoting responsible antimicrobial use!

open.substack.com/pub/resistan...

Two investigations reveal how resistant bacteria may have spread from pets to people

Molecular analysis and epidemiologic detective work helped uncover a hidden One Health link between human and pet clusters of multidrug-resistant bacterial infections.

www.cidrap.umn.edu/a...

Efficient sequence alignment against millions of prokaryotic genomes with LexicMap - Nature Biotechnology LexicMap uses a fixed set of probes to efficiently query gene sequences for fast and low-memory alignment.

Sometimes you meet absolutely incredible bioinfo-magicians.
It was a huge privilege when @shenwei356.bsky.social
joined our group for a year on an @embl.org sabbatical.
While here, he developed a new way of aligning to
millions of bacteria, called LexicMap 1/n
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Breaking News: Read three top CDC officials' resignation emails. The end of an era.

Enough is enough. The health of the country is in danger. Read our resignation letters: insidemedicine.substack.com/p/breaking-n...

Also works for Bordatella bronchiseptica in our patients!🐕 Although I can't see it's been tested on B. pertussis in humans but other tetracyclines seem to do some good so maybe... 🤷

As someone currently writing a PhD literature review on AMR surveillance and gradually beginning to understand the wall of AMR genes in every paper I read, I wish I had a paper like this 6 months ago. Not sure I would be much help though... Yet.

Closure of the Fleming Fund risks undermining UK leadership on AMR - The British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy

"Closure of the Fleming Fund risks undermining UK leadership on AMR." BSAC is seeking urgent clarification from the Government regarding the UK’s future leadership on antimicrobial resistance (#AMR), following reports that the Fleming Fund – the UK’s flagship global AMR programme – is set to close.

‘MMR vaccination uptake rate for children by the age of five in Liverpool is just 73% ... The World Health Organisation says a threshold of 95% is needed to achieve herd immunity’

Please protect child by allowing them to be vaccinated. If you are worried, talk to your doctor. Misinformation kills.

A couple of years ago, I bought the book Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reno Eddo-Lodge. I'm ashamed to say I haven't read it until now. If you haven't, I recommend you do. Today, I'm committing to monthly donations to the British Veterinary Ethnicity and Diversity Society.

Springer Nature Discovers MDPI – The Strain on Scientific Publishing Home page for the paper ‘The Strain on Scientific Publishing’ by Mark A Hanson, Dan Brockington, Paolo Crosetto and Pablo Gomez Barreiro

Springer-Nature launched a series of "Discover" journals that closely mimic MDPI titles -- sharing *identical* journal names, and likely similar business model.

What is going on, and why researcher will - as always - fall for it?

A 🧵

the-strain-on-scientific-publishing.github.io/website/post...

#OneHealthEvent
One Health Investigations of Outbreaks and Spillover Events - on Coursera is a course of 10 content modules and didactic lectures.

Find more:
www.coursera.org/learn/one-he...

#OneHealth #OneHealthResources

Excited to share the first beta release of AMRrules at #ABPHM! (Poster 42 tonight)
interpretamr.github.io/AMRrules

The new version of R for AMR is ready!

🧫 Automated antibiograms

💻 Integration to WHONET

🧪 Updated CLSI and EUCAST breakpoints

💡 Free

amr-for-r.org

#biostatistics #episky #Statistics #AMR

Effect of host microenvironment and bacterial lifestyles on antimicrobial sensitivity and implications for susceptibility testing npj Antimicrobials and Resistance - Effect of host microenvironment and bacterial lifestyles on antimicrobial sensitivity and implications for susceptibility testing

Absolutely thrilled to present our latest review, where we discuss how host microenvironment and bacterial subversion strategies can undermine traditional antimicrobial sensitivity testing, and whether better models may one day get us "beyond the MIC" #IDSKy
rdcu.be/emYoh

Just got back from my own Stag Do, on a beautiful bank holiday weekend, to find out that I am now officially a resident of the European College of Veterinary Microbiology!

🐶🐱 Companion animals need #AntimicrobialStewardship too! In our new SR/MA (led by Dr. Fiona Emdin), we examined short vs. long antibiotic durations for UTIs in dogs & cats.📉 Pooled RR for cure = 0.55 (95% CI: 0.23–1.27), very low certainty.
🔓 doi.org/10.1186/s129...
More high-quality data needed!

The promise and compromise of the WHO Pandemic Agreement for spillover prevention and One Health As scientists, health professionals, and lawyers engaged in reducing pandemic spillover risks, we recognise the urgent need for, and immense potential of, a robust international agreement on pandemic ...

Sharing our new @thelancet.bsky.social piece on spillover prevention & #OneHealth in the WHO #PandemicAgreement. We call on states to adopt the agreement next month. Huge thanks to @alexandrafinch.bsky.social for leading this. Let's get this done and make the world a safer place! bit.ly/3E7RKeu

Thanks for clarifying! Silly question to follow, do you use the uncomplicated UTI breakpoint for other abx for pyelo or prefer non-uti if possible? Just thinking that NICE recommendation of cefuroxime IV/co-amox PO suffers similar issues for non-uti breakpoints

This is kinda where I'm coming from too. Quinolines are favoured in VetMed and I was looking for an alternative to reduce HPCIA use. Wondered if the quinoline thing was dogma after seeing the NICE guideline but the evidence for cephs isn't helping my argument as much as I thought it would 😕

Yeah I do wonder if that's the case sometimes. What's your IV drug of choice? Cefuroxime seems to suffer the same problems but NICE has several other options

Ah my favourite podcast duo to learn AMS from the other side! I must confess, looking through that thread I realised I saw it the first time... And forgot about it 🤦 Does mean the second read was just as interesting though 😂

A pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic assessment of oral antibiotics for pyelonephritis - European Journal of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases Antibiotic resistance to oral antibiotics recommended for pyelonephritis is increasing. The objective was to determine if there is a pharmacological basis to consider alternative treatments/novel dosi...

Sounds interesting! What dose and MIC are you using out of curiosity? This PKPD study suggests NICE doses may hit MICs anywhere from <2 to <16 (link.springer.com/article/10.1...). I will hold my hands up and say my pharmacology needs dusting off though so willing to be told otherwise 🙌

Was thinking of a comparative article on beta-lactams use for pyelonephritis as NICE recommends PO cefalexin but upon reading the literature, I can't make it make sense 🤷 EUCAST only has a UTI breakpoint, PKPD suggests poor empirical choice, but clinical studies seem ok. Can #IDSky help me out here?

Stewardship solutions #3 Viral meningitis, FIP treatment durations and disinfectants for viruses

A month ago I started a fortnightly newsletter on veterinary infections disease, clinical microbiology and antimicrobial stewardship🦠This week covered some latest updates in small animal viral diseases, check it out here: open.substack.com/pub/resistan...

#VetSky

Biodiversity loss in all species and every ecosystem linked to humans – report Sweeping synthesis of 2,000 global studies leaves no doubt about scale of problem and role of humans, say experts

Humans are driving biodiversity loss among all species across the planet, one of the most exhaustive global studies on the subject ever conducted finds.

This is *us*, people: you + me. It's up to all of us to get into the fight for the natural world. 🌏
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

World’s first case of bird flu in sheep detected in England H5N1 virus found in single animal in Yorkshire but risk to general public is very low, say experts

What I don’t get is why the official position continues to be…

“…the risk to livestock and the general public is low.”

This variant of influenza seems to infect everything…how is that a low risk?

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...

Sensitivity and specificity answer the wrong questions Why how we measure a diagnostic test and how we interpret them are equally important

Recently, I was asked for my opinion on a novel veterinary UTI diagnostic. While the technology is fascinating, it is a good example of why sensitivity and specificity aren't always the best measure. Read more in my latest post here: resistanceisfutile.substack.com/p/sensitivit...

#vetsky #IDsky

Was a great event! Fascinating to see so many different aspects of AMR research