1. A crowd of BashTheBug volunteers reproducibly and accurately measure the minimum inhibitory concentrations of 13 antitubercular drugs from photographs of 96-well broth microdilution plates
- Author
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Fowler, P.W., Wright, C., Spiers, H., Zhu, T., Baeten, E.M.L., Hoosdally, S.W., Cruz, A.L.G., Roohi, A., Kouchaki, S., Walker, T.M., Peto, T.E.A., Miller, G., Lintott, C., Clifton, D., Crook, D.W., Walker, A.S., Barilar, I., Battaglia, S., Borroni, E., Brandao, A.P., Brankin, A., Cabibbe, A.M., Carter, J., Chetty, D., Cirillo, D.M., Claxton, P., Clifton, D.A., Cohen, T., Coronel, Jorge, Dreyer, V., Earle, S.G., Escuyer, V., Ferrazoli, L., Gao, G.F., Gardy, J., Gharbia, S., Ghisi, K.T., Ghodousi, A., Grandjean, Louis, Grazian, C., Groenheit, R., Guthrie, J.L., He, W., Hoffmann, H., Hoosdally, S.J., Martinhunt, M., Iqbal, Z., Ismail, N.A., Jarrett, L., Joseph, L., Jou, R., Kambli, P., Khot, R., Knaggs, J., Koch, A., Kohlerschmidt, D., Lachapelle, A.S., Lalvani, A., Lapierre, S.G., Laurenson, I.F., Letcher, B., Lin, W.-H., Liu, C., Liu, D., Malone, K.M., Mandal, A., Mansjõ, M., Matias, D., Meintjes, G., Mendes, F.D.F., Merker, M., Mihalic, M., Millard, J., Miotto, P., Mistry, N., Moore, David Alexander James, Musser, K.A., Ngcamu, D., Nhung, H.N., Niemann, S., Nilgiriwala, K.S., Nimmo, C., O’Donnell, M., Okozi, N., Oliveira, R.S., Omar, S.V., Paton, N., Pinhata, J.M.W., Plesnik, S., Puyen, Z.M., Rabodoarivelo, M.S., Rakotosamimanana, N., Rancoita, P.M.V., Rathod, P., Robinson, E., Rodger, G., Rodrigues, C., Rodwell, T.C., Santos-Lazaro, D., Shah, S., Kohl, T.A., Smith, G., Solano, Walter, Spitaleri, A., Supply, P., Steyn, A.J.C., Surve, U., Tahseen, S., Thuong, N.T.T., Thwaites, G., Todt, K., Trovato, A., Utpatel, C., Van Rie, A., Vijay, S., Warren, R., Werngren, J., Wijkander, M., Wilkinson, R.J., Wilson, D.J., Wintringer, P., Xiao, Y.-X., Yang, Y., Yanlin, Z., Yao, S.-Y., Zhu, B., The Zooniverse Volunteer Community, The CRyPTIC Consortium, Community, The Zooniverse Volunteer, Consortium, The CRyPTIC, Centre d’Infection et d’Immunité de Lille - INSERM U 1019 - UMR 9017 - UMR 8204 (CIIL), Institut Pasteur de Lille, Réseau International des Instituts Pasteur (RIIP)-Réseau International des Instituts Pasteur (RIIP)-Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM)-Université de Lille-Centre Hospitalier Régional Universitaire [Lille] (CHRU Lille)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), and Wellcome Trust
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Volunteers ,Model organisms ,infectious disease ,[SDV]Life Sciences [q-bio] ,Immunology ,Antitubercular Agents ,Infectious Disease ,Microbial Sensitivity Tests ,Zooniverse Volunteer Community ,0601 Biochemistry and Cell Biology ,antibiotics ,General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology ,Imaging ,minimum inhibitory concentrations ,antitubercular drugs ,citizen science ,M. tuberculosis ,Humans ,clinical microbiology ,Human Biology & Physiology ,General Immunology and Microbiology ,CRyPTIC Consortium ,Prevention ,General Neuroscience ,FOS: Clinical medicine ,microbiology ,BashTheBug ,Mycobacterium tuberculosis ,General Medicine ,microdilution plates ,Emerging Infectious Diseases ,Infectious Diseases ,Good Health and Well Being ,tuberculosis ,5.1 Pharmaceuticals ,photographs ,Antimicrobial Resistance ,Biochemistry and Cell Biology ,Development of treatments and therapeutic interventions ,Infection - Abstract
Tuberculosis is a respiratory disease that is treatable with antibiotics. An increasing prevalence of resistance means that to ensure a good treatment outcome it is desirable to test the susceptibility of each infection to different antibiotics. Conventionally, this is done by culturing a clinical sample and then exposing aliquots to a panel of antibiotics, each being present at a pre-determined concentration, thereby determining if the sample isresistant or susceptible to each sample. The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of a drug is the lowestconcentration that inhibits growth and is a more useful quantity but requires each sample to be tested at a range ofconcentrations for each drug. Using 96-well broth micro dilution plates with each well containing a lyophilised pre-determined amount of an antibiotic is a convenient and cost-effective way to measure the MICs of several drugs at once for a clinical sample. Although accurate, this is still an expensive and slow process that requires highly-skilled and experienced laboratory scientists. Here we show that, through the BashTheBug project hosted on the Zooniverse citizen science platform, a crowd of volunteers can reproducibly and accurately determine the MICs for 13 drugs and that simply taking the median or mode of 11-17 independent classifications is sufficient. There is therefore a potential role for crowds to support (but not supplant) the role of experts in antibiotic susceptibility testing.Tuberculosis is a bacterial respiratory infection that kills about 1.4 million people worldwide each year. While antibiotics can cure the condition, the bacterium responsible for this disease
- Published
- 2022
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