Flor Matthias, Tenhagen Bernd-Alois, Käsbohrer Annemarie
Department Biological Safety, German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, Berlin, Germany.
Unit of Veterinary Public Health and Epidemiology, Department for Farm Animals and Veterinary Public Health, University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, Austria.
Front Vet Sci. 2022 Jun 27;9:913197. doi: 10.3389/fvets.2022.913197. eCollection 2022.
The German Antibiotics Minimization Concept defines a farm-level benchmarking process based on half-yearly treatment frequencies that applies to six animal populations for fattening: calves (≤ 8 months), cattle (> 8 months), piglets (≤ 30 kg), pigs (> 30 kg), broiler chickens, and turkeys. The treatment frequency defined in the Minimization Concept takes into account the number of animals treated, the treatment duration, and the number of active antimicrobial ingredients, for each individual treatment, and is equivalent to a treatment frequency based on the used daily dose (UDD) and the actual weight of the animals at the time of treatment. With data from the German benchmarking system for the seven half-year periods from the second semester 2014 to the end of 2017, we compared UDD-based metrics of antimicrobial use (AMU) at the treatment and the farm level with metrics based on defined daily doses for animals (DDDvet) and standardized animal weights assumed at the time most likely for treatment. We show the extent to which DDDvet-based metrics would introduce errors into the measurement of AMU at the treatment level and consequently at the farm level. To that end, we introduce the average animal daily dose ratio, an aggregate measure that quantifies how choice of antimicrobial substances, deviations of used doses from recommended doses, of recommended doses from DDDvet values, and of treatment weights from standardized weights, affect a farm's AMU metrics. Our results show that in all animal populations considered benchmarking processes would become less successful at targeting high users. This would be especially true for broiler chickens and turkeys where the relative weight gain during fattening is the largest and overdosing appears to be common practice. Therefore, in AMU monitoring systems with the purpose of benchmarking farms UDD-based metrics are preferable to DDDvet-based metrics.
德国抗生素最小化概念定义了一个基于半年治疗频率的农场层面基准化流程，该流程适用于六个育肥动物群体：犊牛（≤8个月）、牛（>8个月）、仔猪（≤30千克）、猪（>30千克）、肉鸡和火鸡。最小化概念中定义的治疗频率考虑了每次个体治疗中接受治疗的动物数量、治疗持续时间以及活性抗菌成分的数量，并且等同于基于使用的每日剂量（UDD）和治疗时动物实际体重的治疗频率。利用2014年下半年至2017年底七个半年期德国基准化系统的数据，我们将治疗层面和农场层面基于UDD的抗菌药物使用（AMU）指标与基于动物定义每日剂量（DDDvet）以及最可能治疗时假定的标准化动物体重的指标进行了比较。我们展示了基于DDDvet的指标在治疗层面以及因此在农场层面的AMU测量中会引入多大程度的误差。为此，我们引入了平均动物每日剂量比，这是一种综合度量，用于量化抗菌物质的选择、使用剂量与推荐剂量的偏差、推荐剂量与DDDvet值的偏差以及治疗体重与标准化体重的偏差如何影响农场的AMU指标。我们的结果表明，在所有考虑的动物群体中，基准化流程在针对高用量用户方面的成效会降低。对于肉鸡和火鸡尤其如此，在育肥期间它们的相对体重增加最大，且过量用药似乎是常见做法。因此，在旨在对农场进行基准化的AMU监测系统中，基于UDD的指标比基于DDDvet的指标更可取。
