THE NATIONAL ANTIMICROBIAL RESISTANCE MONITORING SYSTEM

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has been ranked by the World Health Organization as one of the top global health challenges. Reducing human exposure to antimicrobial resistant microorganisms and their resistance determinants is key to reducing the burden of antimicrobial resistant infections, and food is a potential source of human exposure. An antimicrobial resistance monitoring system is required to track resistance among different population groups and in different settings over time, detect new resistance types, reveal the underlying determinants of resistance in different microorganisms, and measure the effectiveness of interventions.

The National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System (NARMS) was established in 1996 as a collaboration of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and state and local health departments. NARMS currently tracks resistance in enteric bacteria from humans, retail meats, and food-producing animals at the time of
slaughter. Nontyphoidal Salmonella and Campylobacter are among the leading bacterial causes of foodborne illness in the United States and many other countries. Each year these two pathogens alone are estimated to cause over 2.5 million illnesses in the U.S. resulting in nearly 40,000 hospitalizations and hundreds of deaths. Whereas most Salmonella and Campylobacter infections are self-limited, some require treatment with
antimicrobial agents. Emergence of antimicrobial resistance in foodborne pathogens presents a challenge for treatment of infections that warrant antimicrobial therapy.