Report highlights continued focus and efforts on antimicrobial stewardship with reductions in antibiotic use in dogs, and HP-CIA use in cats

The latest RUMA CA&E Annual Progress Report details the work undertaken by the Alliance and some of its members over the past 12 to18 months as well as across the wider CA&E sectors. It also includes the latest data on dogs and cats provided by the Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD) and taken from the UK-Veterinary Antibiotic Resistance Sales Surveillance (2023) Report.

Steve Howard, RUMA CA&E secretary general, says: “I am pleased to see that data from the latest UK-Veterinary Antimicrobial Resistance and Sales Surveillance (VARSS) Report (2023) which was released on 19 November 2024, is showing reductions in antibiotic use in dogs and HP-CIA use in cats between 2022 and 2023, which is testament to the extensive industry activities underway and overall commitment to antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) from the profession.”

Gwyn Jones, RUMA CA&E Chair, says: “RUMA CA&E’s mission has progressed in earnest over the past 12 months which has seen us continue our efforts to further evolve industry focus on antimicrobial stewardship across the CA&E sectors.

“Our key activities have included the delivery of another important industry roundtable event to continue to explore solutions towards reporting annual antibiotic usage figures for CA&E sectors; our Targets and Measures Working Group (T&MWG) has been working hard to further evolve a suite of measures beyond the national metrics for dogs and cats that were defined last year; and we have just completed the delivery of the third Veterinary Antibiotic Amnesty campaign which is one of our flagship industry AMS initiatives. In addition, we created a sub-group of stakeholders to discuss Medicines Stewardship beyond antibiotics. While antibiotics do, of course, remain a primary focus, we recognise the importance of broadening our activities within our remit to cover antiparasitics and anthelmintics and with that in mind, we organised and hosted a series of meetings with representation from many key industry stakeholders to explore key factors associated with these products and how, as an Alliance, we can promote and support their responsible use.”

Latest dog and cat results

• In dogs, antibiotic use using the mg/kg metric has decreased year-on-year since 2016, except for between 2020 and 2021 when it increased, and there has been a 15% reduction between 2022-2023

• In cats, antibiotic use decreased between 2014 and 2015 but since then has shown a small but steady upward trend, with a decrease between 2021 and 2022 and an 11% increase between 2022-2023

• The DDDVet data shows the same trends as described for mg/kg, with both sectors showing an increase as society and the veterinary sector initially emerged from the pandemic, followed by a decrease between 2021 and 2022. The 2023 data shows a decrease in dogs of 0.39 DDDVet/animal and a marginal uplift for cats of 0.06 DDDVet/animal (DDDVet represents the average dose per kg animal per species per day)

• Use of HP-CIAs in dogs remains at its lowest since 2014. In dogs there has been a 14 percent reduction between 2022 and 2023 and a nine year overall reduction of 57 percent. In cats there has been a reduction of 16 percent between 2022 and 2023 and a nine year overall reduction of 42 percent

• For topical products sold for dogs and cats between 2014-2023, in dogs there was a small uplift of 0.32mg/kg and in cats an increase of 0.10mg/kg between 2022 and 2023. However, the overall nine-year trend shows a very positive reduction in topical antibiotics sold of 41 percent in dogs and 33 percent in cats. The uplift between 2022 and 2023 may reflect a move away from systemic antibiotics towards more targeted topical therapy, which is considered lower risk in terms of the development of AMR

• There are a number of topical products containing HP-CIAs in use in the Companion Animal sector which provide valuable options to clinicians in the face of some conditions which can be difficult to treat. It is encouraging to see that the rate of use in both dogs and cats is much lower than overall topical use, and that between 2021 and 2023 there has been a decrease in the use of topical HP-CIAs in both dogs and cats

To read and download the report visit: Reports – RUMA CA&E.