Dr. Lautenbach’s research program focuses on the epidemiology of antimicrobial resistance. He has focused specifically on fluoroquinolone resistance in Escherichia coli demonstrating significant increases in fluoroquinolone resistance over time in various healthcare settings, a strong independent…
more association between fluoroquinolone use and fluoroquinolone resistance, and frequent inappropriate fluoroquinolone prescribing. Dr. Lautenbach has also concentrated on elucidating the complex interrelationship between the clinical epidemiology (e.g., patient-level risk factors) and molecular epidemiology (e.g., resistance mechanisms, genetic relatedness of isolates) of fluoroquinolone resistance. He has identified that fluoroquinolone resistant E. coli isolates in hospitalized patients are rarely genetically related which has important infection control implications. Dr. Lautenbach has also shown that even E. coli isolates that do not meet criteria for resistance by clinical microbiological thresholds often harbor one or more resistance mutations. Identification of such organisms may provide the opportunity for improved targeting of antimicrobial therapy to prevent resistance. Dr. Lautenbach has also demonstrated a more sophisticated understanding of epidemiological methodology is critical to accurately identifying the factors that drive resistance. For example, his work has found that widely disparate approaches to categorizing prior antibiotic exposures (e.g., by agent, class, or spectrum) have been employed and that different categorization schemes result in substantially different conclusions regarding which antibiotics are associated with resistance.
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