Antimicrobial resistance - theory and methods

Antimicrobial resistance is an increasingly pressing global concern. This course offers unique and comprehensive insights into the challenges posed by AMR, exploring its mechanisms, implications for public health and laboratory methods as well as tools for identification. Participants gain learning experience on how bacteria become resistant and which mechanisms lead to the outcome of resistance. As part of the course, you will also receive demonstration and training in methods for antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) and detection of specific resistance in the microbiological laboratories. Additionally, it will take you through various techniques employed including culture-based methods such as agar dilution and disk diffusion assays which determine the susceptibility of bacteria to antibiotics. Molecular methods such as polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and whole genome sequencing are also outlined in detail equipping you with basic understanding. These methods provide valuable insights into the prevalence and mechanisms of AMR, aiding in the development of effective treatment strategies and surveillance programs. In our new version an additional module including detection of specific resistance mechanisms has been incorporated.

• Welcome to the course
• This module is a welcome to the course where you can find information on the course structure, the content that you will be introduced to in the next modules, the grading, as well as an introduction to the instructors and the teaching material.
• Module A- Antimicrobial and Antimicrobial Action
• In this module you will learn about antibiotics/ antimicrobials and you will get to know more about what they are, where they come from, what are the major groups and how can we classify them, as well as how do they have an effect and how do they act on the bacterial cells.
• Module B - Antimicrobials and Resistance
• This module contains information about antimicrobials and the development of resistance in bacteria including causes for resistance and their mechanisms, as well as an insight in how resistance disseminates and how it can be selected.
• Module C- Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing
• This module deals with antimicrobial susceptibility testing in the laboratory: its importance and use, descriptions of the methods and their applications and detailed descriptions of the procedures applied for the main methods. Additionally, this module gives practical insight on how to interpret antimicrobial susceptibility results.
• Module E- Quality Management and Quality Control
• This module is dedicated to Quality management and Quality assurance (QA)/ Quality control (QC) procedures and use of QC strains to assure the quality of results of antimicrobial susceptibility testing: importance, elements and principles.
• Module D- Alternatives to Phenotypic Testing (Whole Genome Analysis Tools)
• As alternative to the phenotypical methods, the researcher might decide to use genotypically based methods to identify genes of interest. In the lectures of this module we present the ResFinder tool which may be used to find resistance mechanisms ( genes and in the future versions also specific point mutations) from Whole genome sequences of bacteria of interest. The second lecture is a demonstration of the MyDBFinder which can be used to identify genes of interest defined by the user from Whole genome sequence data. DISCLAIMER: There has been a change since the ResFinder video lecture was prepared – and there is now only one ResFinder web-tool available: http://genepi.food.dtu.dk/resfinder . This version of the ResFinder automatically includes both the ResFinder and PointFinder databases .
• Module F- Presentation of Critically Important Antimicrobials
• The module provides an in-depth understanding of critical important antimicrobials (CIA). You will explore the importance of CIAs, the mechanism of action and the challenges associated.