Estimating the population-level prevalence of antimicrobial-resistant enteric bacteria from latrine samples

Logistical and economic barriers hamper community-level surveillance for antimicrobial-resistant bacteria in low-income countries. Latrines are commonly used in these settings and offer a low-cost source of surveillance samples. It is unclear, however, whether antimicrobial resistance prevalence estimates from latrine samples reflect estimates generated from randomly sampled people.

Although latrine samples did not perfectly estimate household antimicrobial resistance prevalence, they were highly correlated and thus could be employed as low-cost samples to monitor trends in antimicrobial resistance, detect the emergence of new resistance phenotypes and assess the impact of community interventions.