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| 2021/10/05 Nathaniel Osgood & Cheryl Waldner Event1 #701448 Antimicrobial resistance from farm to fork: first steps in a multi-scale modelling approach. | - Speaker: Nathaniel Osgood, University of Saskatchewan, Cheryl Waldner, University of Saskatchewan
- Date and Time: Tuesday, October 5, 2021 - 1:00pm to 2:00pm
- Abstract: While the troubling morbidity and mortality burden of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in long-term and acute care facilities and in the community is widely recognized, there is less public understanding of the potential importance of AMR in animal health. Agricultural animals also require antimicrobial use for the management and treatment of bacterial diseases. Such antimicrobial use (AMU) can increase the risk of selection for AMR; however, contagious transmission of AMR is an increasingly recognized threat. Attempts to model and understand AMR are rendered more textured by interaction of AMU exposure because of the number of levels of organization that impact exposure to AMU, disease risk, potential for transmission, and the biology of AMR itself within individual microbes and microbial populations. While all of these factors are important, one which is typically not considered in attempts to depict this complex system is the co-location of genes for antimicrobial resistance on mobile genetic elements as well as the recognition that similarities in drug action can confer resistance to others in the same antimicrobial class. Moreover, these mobile elements -- such as integrative conjugative elements (ICE) -- can migrate between genomes of different microbes within species as well as some among different species. We describe here work underway confronting these challenges using an agent-based modeling approach that is proving encouraging in its ability to grapple with these complexities at multiple scales, accounting for empirically observed outcomes despite notable uncertainties while exploiting multiple unique lines of expert knowledge and empirical data. We also note sequential model extensions under development as part of this project exploring the potential risks for AMR in livestock to lead to human exposure through foodborne exposure or contamination of water used for irrigation or drinking before treatment.
- Dr. Cheryl Waldner is a professor at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine and a NSERC/Beef Cattle Research Council Research Chair. She is particularly interested in antimicrobial use and resistance as well as the prevention and control of infectious diseases. She leads a multimillion dollar research program funded by Genome Canada, NSERC and the beef industry related to antimicrobial stewardship and surveillance, the health and productivity of beef cattle, as well as the development of genomic diagnostic tools to inform AMU in feedlot cattle. Dr. Waldner has more than 250 peer-reviewed publications and more than 6000 citations. Cheryl and her husband own and operate a cow-calf operation near Saskatoon. For more information: https://researchers.usask.ca/cheryl-waldner/#LeadershipandPresentations
- Dr Nathaniel Osgood serves as Professor of Computer Science, Director of the Computational Epidemiology and Public Health Informatics Laboratory at the University of Saskatchewan & served as technical director of provincial COVID-19 modelling from March 2020-March 2021. His work combines tools from Systems Science, Data Science, Computational Science and Applied Mathematics to inform decision making in health & health care. Leveraging diverse data sources, transmission modelling and machine learning methods, CEPHIL delivers COVID-19 reporting for SK, for all provinces for PHAC and for Canada’s First Nations (via FNIHB). In addition to diverse application studies across the communicable, zoonotic, environmental, mental health and chronic disease areas, he has contributed a broad set of relevant methodological innovations to improve dynamic modelling quality and efficiency, introduced novel techniques hybridizing multiple simulation approaches and simulation models with decision analysis and computational statistics tools, and leveraged models using data gathered from mobile sensors, social media, and online search volumes. Dr. Osgood is further the co-creator of two novel wireless sensor-based epidemiological monitoring systems, most recently the Ethica Data system for smartphones and wearables. For information: https://www.cs.usask.ca/~osgood/
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