Food and Drug Administration officials want help collecting data on how antimicrobial administration to companion animals affects development of drug resistance.
A Feb. 15 announcement from the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine indicates the FDA needs to better understand how drug use in animals such as dogs, cats, and horses might impact antimicrobial resistance in pathogens of animals and people.
Details on the request for comments are available at regulations.gov under docket number FDA-2021-N-1305. Comments are due June 16.
A Federal Register notice published Feb. 16 says FDA CVM officials want descriptions on how practices of antimicrobial use in companion animals may affect resistance development among bacterial pathogens of companion animals and of humans. Officials want to learn about concerns regarding resistance development related to particular antimicrobials or antimicrobial drug classes administered to companion animals, as well as how the importance of a drug to human medicine should be considered in decisions about whether to administer the drug to companion animals.
The notice also asks how the CVM can encourage greater antimicrobial stewardship that could help preserve drug effectiveness, how the center can encourage development of new antimicrobials, what study designs present or reduce challenges for developing needed antimicrobial drugs, and whether any specific infectious diseases are— from a stewardship perspective—best treated with topical antimicrobial formulations. The notice asks what information on drug labels helps veterinarians follow the principles of antimicrobial stewardship, what additional information could help, and whether veterinarians need drug stewardship information that they can provide to clients.
[Source: AVMA.org ]
