Longitudinal Assessment of Carriage of Drug-Resistant Escherichia coli

James Platts-Mills of the University of Virginia in the U.S. will quantify the effect of factors, including antibiotic use and hospitalization, in infants on the subsequent incidence and spread of drug-resistant pathogens in developing countries. This will help design more effective strategies for containing it. They will use samples and data taken from birth up to one year of age from a previous longitudinal study, the MAL-ED study, which was performed in eight developing countries. Monthly samples from fifty infants will be analyzed for the emergence of drug-resistant E. coli. Data from each individual on their use of antibiotics and the presence of infections over this time period will then be analyzed to estimate how each factor contributes to drug resistance.