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The Role of Mathematical Modeling in Designing and Evaluating Antimicrobial Stewardship Programs

  • Antimicrobial Stewardship (AL Pakyz, Section Editor)
  • Published:
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Opinion statement

Antimicrobial agent effectiveness continues to be threatened by the rise and spread of pathogen strains that exhibit drug resistance. This challenge is most acute in healthcare facilities where the well-established connection between resistance and suboptimal antimicrobial use has prompted the creation of antimicrobial stewardship programs (ASPs). Mathematical models offer tremendous potential for serving as an alternative to controlled human experimentation for assessing the effectiveness of ASPs. Models can simulate controlled randomized experiments between groups of virtual patients, some treated with the ASP measure under investigation, and some without. By removing the limitations inherent in human experimentation, including health risks, study cohort size, possible number of replicates, and effective study duration, model simulations can provide valuable information to inform decisions regarding the design of new ASPs, as well as evaluation and improvement of existing ASPs. To date, the potential of mathematical modeling methods in evaluating ASPs is largely untapped and much work remains to be done to leverage this potential.

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References and Recommended Reading

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Correspondence to Lester Caudill PhD.

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Lester Caudill declares that he has no conflict of interest.

Joanna Wares declares that she has no conflict of interest.

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This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by the authors.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Antimicrobial Stewardship

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Caudill, L., Wares, J.R. The Role of Mathematical Modeling in Designing and Evaluating Antimicrobial Stewardship Programs. Curr Treat Options Infect Dis 8, 124–138 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40506-016-0074-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40506-016-0074-8

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