Thomas Tängdén

Thomas Tängdén (MD, PhD) is an infectious disease physician, chair of the Swedish Strategic Programme against Antibiotic Resistance (Strama), project leader of PLATINEA 2.0 – a collaborative project promoting availability and individualized use of antibiotics, chair of the ESCMID PK/PD study group (EPASG), and medical advisor of the global resistance network ReAct.

The emergence and spread of multidrug-resistant bacteria results in treatment failure and increased mortality in common infections. Moreover, antibiotic resistance threatens all parts of modern medicine that depend on antibiotics to prevent and treat infections, e.g., neonatal care, major surgery, and chemotherapy. My research includes randomized and observational clinical trials, interventions to improve antibiotic use at hospitals, pharmacokinetic studies, metagenomic analyses of the microbiome, and in vitro studies to find new diagnostic and treatment strategies to overcome multidrug resistance.

Specific objectives are to explore 1) Which interventions are most efficient to improve antibiotic prescribing and dosing in hospitals and how can they be implemented? 2) What negative effects on the gut microbiota occur during antibiotic treatment and what are the clinical implications? 3) Which oral antibiotics are ecologically favorable and effective in the treatment of infections caused by multidrug-resistant bacteria? and 4) Which antibiotic combinations can act synergistically to combat extensively resistant Gram-negative bacteria?

The overall aim is to generate new knowledge that can support optimized use of antibiotics to maximize their efficacy while reducing the risks of side effects and resistance development.