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Antimicrobial resistance poses a growing threat to public health and the provision of health care. Its surveillance should provide up-to-date and relevant information to monitor the appropriateness of therapy guidelines, antibiotic formulary, antibiotic stewardship programmes, public health interventions, infection control policies, and antimicrobial development. In Europe, although the European Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance Network provides annual reports on monitored resistant bacteria, national surveillance efforts are still fragmented and heterogeneous, and have substantial structural problems and issues with laboratory data. Most incidence and prevalence data cannot be linked with relevant epidemiological, clinical, or outcome data. Genetic typing, to establish whether trends of antimicrobial resistance are caused by spread of resistant strains or by transfer of resistance determinants among different strains and species, is not routinely done. Furthermore, laboratory-based surveillance using only clinical samples is not likely to be useful as an early warning system for emerging pathogens and resistance mechanisms. Insufficient coordination of surveillance systems of human antimicrobial resistance with animal surveillance systems is even more concerning. Because results from food surveillance are considered commercially sensitive, they are rarely released publicly by regulators. Inaccurate or incomplete surveillance data delay a translational approach to the threat of antimicrobial resistance and inhibit the identification of relevant target microorganisms and populations for research and the revitalisation of dormant drug-discovery programmes. High-quality, comprehensive, and real-time surveillance data are essential to reduce the burden of antimicrobial resistance. Improvement of national antimicrobial resistance surveillance systems and better alignment between human and veterinary surveillance systems in Europe must become a scientific and political priority, coordinated with international ...

Purpose of the studyEfficacy, toxicity and complexity of antiretroviral (ARV) regimens may impact the quality of life (QoL). Since over the past years the simplification approach of lopinavir/ritonavir (LPV/r) as monotherapy (MT) has been shown to be non‐inferior to triple therapy (TT) in virological and immunological efficacy, the objective of this study was to compare several health‐ and treatment‐related outcomes between both ARV strategies with LPV/r.MethodsA phase IV national, multicenter, controlled, randomized (2:1), open label, parallel‐group clinical trial to compare the QoL in patients on ARV TT containing any boosted protease inhibitor (PI), undetectable viral load (VL< 50 cop/mL) in the past 6 months and a CD4 nadir > 100 cells/µL, versus those who were simplified to LPV/r MT, for 24 weeks. QoL and health outcomes were evaluated by the Medical Outcomes Study HIV Health Survey (MOS‐HIV) and the five‐dimensional EuroQol questionnaire (EQ‐5D). Treatment satisfaction was assessed by the Spanish Questionnaire of Satisfaction with ARV Treatment (CESTA). Treatment adherence was assessed by the Spanish Multifactorial Adherence questionnaire (GEEMA) and a visual analog scale (VAS). Tolerability, safety and virological and immunological efficacy at week 24 were also analyzed.Summary of results225 patients from 29 sites were enrolled (MT: 146, 64.5%; TT: 79, 35.1%). Mean age (years) was 44.5 in MT and 45.2 in TT (p=0.745); mean duration (years) from HIV infection was 13.4 in MT and 12.8 in TT (p=0.587) and 71% were male in both arms. 87.6% of patients completed correctly the study (MT: 88.4%; TT: 86.1%; p=0.674). Health and treatment outcomes evaluated at final study visit are shown in figure 1 1. At study end, 84.1% in MT and 89.6% in TT had undetectable VL (p=0.313) and mean CD4 count were 742.8 cells/µL in MT and 646.5 cells/µL in TT (p=0.060). There were no significant differences in the percentage of patients with virological failure at week 24 as VL >50 cop/mL (MT: 8.2%; TT: 3.9%; p=0.271) and as VL >200 cop/mL (MT: 3.4%; TT: 0%; p=0.167).'Quality of life' impact: monotherapy vs triple therapy.imageConclusionsThe MT simplification strategy with LPV/r maintains comparable virological and immunological efficacy, as well as the tolerability profile, than the TT. The saving resulting from NRTIs withdrawal from the ARV regimen and the good results on QoL and patients treatment satisfaction make MT strategy with LPV/r be taken into account in clinical practice.