£2.9 million awarded to tackling Antibacterial Resistance in Thailand

Collaborative ABR research in the Chulabhorn Research Institute, Thailand

22 June 2018

An inter-disciplinary research consortium led by the University of Bristol has won a £2.9m award from the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) to help tackle the growing incidence of antibacterial resistance in Thailand.

Antimicrobial resistance and specifically antibacterial (antibiotic) resistance (ABR) is a growing threat to human health and economic development across the globe. In Thailand, ABR was estimated to cause 38,000 deaths. The predicted economic loss on the country was 1.2 billion USD in 2010.

This new study, “One Health Drivers of Antibacterial Resistance in Thailand”, aims to identify why ABR is such a problem in Thailand, and what can be done about it. The study will focus on two species of bacteria, Klebsiella pneumoniae (Kp) and Escherichia coli (Ec). They are carried in the intestines of humans and animals and commonly contaminate the environment. They move between these sites and are the cause of a large proportion of bacterial infections world-wide, including serious infections with high mortality rates.

Increasingly, both species of bacteria are showing resistance to antibacterial drugs and they are recognised by the World Health Organisation as being amongst the highest priority pathogens globally, for which new antibiotics are urgently needed.

Researchers will study whether Ec and Kp transmit between animals and people directly or via the environment in Thailand, and how farm management practices, chemical pollution from agriculture and industry, and human behaviours around food preparation and antibiotic use influence transmission.

By considering chemical, environmental, microbiological and socioeconomic factors that increase ABR, the study aims to build a holistic picture of ABR drivers in Thailand. It is intended that the findings can be used to aid the Thai people by suggesting changes that can be made to reduce, or at least slow down the rise of ABR.

The study site will cover an area measuring 80x80 km in central and west Thailand. This area allows multiple sites including rivers, factories, animal farms, rice fields, fruit orchards, healthcare facilities and human communities to be considered in the study.

The majority of sample and data collection will be performed by researchers from Chulabhorn Research Institute and Mahidol University in Thailand. Data analysis and intervention modelling will be led by UK researchers from the Universities of Bristol, Bath, Exeter and the NERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Oxfordshire. The consortium will engage closely with Thailand's National Strategic Plan on ABR, which aims to reduce ABR and improve human health in Thailand.

Principal Investigator, Dr Matthew Avison from the School of Cellular Molecular Medicine, University of Bristol said: “This is a challenging, ambitious and exciting project. Consortium members from Thailand and the UK will come together and build on existing strengths in ABR research. We are provided with a wonderful opportunity to improve global health and we look forward to working together.”

Further information

You can learn more about the project with this video.

The project was born out of a meeting between UK and Thai ABR researchers at the University of Bristol funded by a GW4 “Building Communities Initiator Award” and the EPSRC via its “BristolBridge” AMR research network. Subsequently, the team received a development award of £80k from an MRC-led UK Research Institute and Department of Health’s ‘AMR in a Global Context’ call, which was used to fund the GW4-UK-Thai network. In December 2017 and January 2018, GW4 researchers travelled to Thailand to hold workshops, gather preliminary data and further develop this new network in Thailand, resulting in the project funded by this award.

The GCRF is a 5 year 1.5 billion-pound UK initiative set up to fund projects which work in partnership with Overseas Development Assistance countries to promote their economic and welfare development.

GW4 is an alliance which combines the intellectual capacity and physical resources of the four leading research-intensive universities in the South West of England and Wales: Bath, Bristol, Cardiff and Exeter.