Consolidating Antibiotic Resistance Gene Databases for Clinical Microbiology
The proliferation of NGS-based surveillance of multidrug-resistant pathogens has created a fragmented landscape of antibiotic resistance gene databases with inconsistent data quality and accessibility. This review explores existing AR gene resources, identifies their limitations including lack of standardisation, and proposes solutions for a more unified platform. Consolidating these resources is essential for enabling reliable NGS-based resistance prediction in clinical microbiology workflows.
The original study
Consolidating and Exploring Antibiotic Resistance Gene Data Resources.
- Authors
- Xavier BB, Das AJ, Cochrane G, De Ganck S, Kumar-Singh S, Aarestrup FM, et al.
- Journal
- Journal of clinical microbiology
- Type
- Journal Article, Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't, Review
- PMID
- 26818666
Original abstract
The unrestricted use of antibiotics has resulted in rapid acquisition of antibiotic resistance (AR) and spread of multidrug-resistant (MDR) bacterial pathogens. With the advent of next-generation sequencing technologies and their application in understanding MDR pathogen dynamics, it has become imperative to unify AR gene data resources for easy accessibility for researchers. However, due to the absence of a centralized platform for AR gene resources, availability, consistency, and accuracy of information vary considerably across different databases. In this article, we explore existing AR gene data resources in order to make them more visible to the clinical microbiology community, to identify their limitations, and to propose potential solutions.