In July, Emma Harding-Esch spoke at the STI and HIV World Congress in Rio on how to best manage the increasing challenge of anti-microbial resistance (AMR). The research she presented was a collaboration between Aquarius Population Health and ADREU St. Georges. In recent years, there has been an increase in resistance to first-line therapies used to treat STIs such as gonorrhoea. The Aquarius team built a decision tree model to assess the cost-effectiveness of standard care compared to several hypothetical rapid point-of-care tests (POCT) for antibiotic susceptibility. The model simulated a cohort of sexual health clinic attendees. The results showed that while standard care is the cheapest option, AMR POCTs may be cost-effective and maximise the number of effective agents in treatment regimens, providing long-term benefits in some scenarios.
Harding-Esch EM, Huntington SE, Harvey MJ, et al. Cost-effectiveness of antimicrobial resistance point-of-care testing for optimising the treatment of gonorrhoea STI & HIV World Congress. 9-12 July 2017. Rio de Janiero, Brazil.