NARMS Now, which is part of the National Strategy for Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria (CARB) and the President’s Open Government Initiative has been released to the public. NARMS reports present aggregated data, but this new system is the entire collection of the government’s enteric bacterial isolates collected over the past 18 years.
The data includes information for Salmonella, Campylobacter, E. coli, and Enterococcus. It allows data sharing for those who want to download and analyze microbiological data. It will be incorporated into interactive displays to let readers visualize findings across sample sources.
The new tool makes it quicker and easier to see how antibiotic resistance for four bacteria spread through food. Every year in the U.S., antibiotic-resistant bacteria cause 2,000,000 illnesses and 23,000 deaths. Antibiotic-resistant infections from foodborne bacteria cause 440,000 of those illnesses.
NARMS Now lets users access antibiotic resistance data by bacterial serotype, antibiotic, year from 1996 through 2013, and geographic region. This can be used to inform regulatory agency action, examine the geographic distribution of antibiotic resistance, monitor changing trends in resistance, and give researchers and doctors timely access to data.
The data can be viewed in interactive maps and in tables. Data will be uploaded and updated regularly.
Using this tool, FDA withdrew approval for Enrofloxacin, a fluoroquinolone used in poultry, after data showed an increase in fluoroquinolone-resistant Campylobacter infections in people. The data have also been sued to investigate geographic distribution of multidrug-resistant Salmonella infections in the country.
And investigators use this data to uncover the reason behind increasing antibiotic resistance in a type of Salmonella I4,[5],12,:i:-, that has recently emerged and caused the outbreak linked to pork in Washington state. That outbreak has sickened at least 134 people.
