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Link: NetDoctor.co.uk - Daily news.
Restricting the use of antibiotics in animals may prevent drug-resistance in humans, new research suggests. The research, published in the Clinical Infectious Diseases journal, found that the Australian government's policy of restricting the use of the antibiotic fluoroquinolone in food animals has caused a reduction in the levels of drug-resistant bacteria in people. The researchers measured the levels of drug resistance of the bacteria campylobacter jejuni - a leading cause of food-borne illness - in Australian subjects and compared them with non-Australians whose countries did not restrict the use of fluoroquinolone. They found that in the Australian subjects the levels of drug resistance of the bacteria was significantly reduced. Commenting on the results, lead researcher Leanne Unicomb, an epidemiologist with Australia National University, said that the results strongly suggested a link between animal antibiotic use and human drug resistance.
Link: Independent Online Edition > Obituaries.
Andy Anderson, as he was known to friends and colleagues (he hated the names Ephraim Saul), made internationally acclaimed contributions to our knowledge of the genes responsible for resistance - and did so without benefit of the techniques that now greatly facilitate such work. At the same time he was a major driving force behind moves to curb the spread of resistance through restrictions on the indiscriminate use of these drugs, especially in the rearing of calves, pigs, poultry and other livestock in Britain. Long into retirement, he remained concerned that such initiatives had not gone far enough to combat a phenomenon which (in the form of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, MRSA, for example) remains with us today.
Link: HighWire Press -- Medline Abstract.
Two isolates of mecA-positive methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) from retail raw chicken meat were characterized by phenotypic and genotypic methods. One isolate showed the human biovar, coagulase type III, phage group I . III, the lack of production of enterotoxins and TSST-1, and resistance to PCG/ABPC/EM/GM/KM. The other isolate showed the human biovar, coagulase type III, phage group III, production of enterotoxin C and TSST-1, and resistance to PCG/ABPC/CEZ. The biotyping results indicate that the two isolates showed characteristics of human S. aureus. They also harbored SCCmec type IV, which has prevalently been found in community-acquired MRSA isolates. This paper is the first publication regarding MRSA isolates from raw chicken meat in Japan.
Link: Highlights from ICAAC
Antibiotics for Growth Promotion in Animal Feeds: An impressive report by A. Van Den Bogaard et al, from the Netherlands [Abstract C-77] addressed the issue of antibiotics as growth promoters in animal feed. The authors noted that Sweden prohibited the use of antibiotics for this purpose in 1986, in the Netherlands there is an annual use of 300,000 kilograms of antibiotics for growth promotion in animals. This study was an analysis of E. coli and enterococci from stool samples of pigs in the Netherlands (n = 1,321) and from Sweden (n = 100). VRE were detected in 39% of samples from the Netherlands compared to 0% in Sweden. There was also a significant decrease in the prevalence of resistance in isolates from Swedish pigs for ampicillin, tetracycline, chloramphenicol, trimethoprim and neomycin in E. coli.Link: Methicillin (Oxacillin)-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus .
From May 2001 to April 2003, various types of specimens from cattle, pigs, and chickens were collected and examined for the presence of methicillin (oxacillin)-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). S. aureus was isolated and positively identified by using Gram staining, colony morphology, tests for coagulase and urease activities, and an API Staph Ident system. Among 1,913 specimens collected from the animals, 421 contained S. aureus; of these, 28 contained S. aureus resistant to concentrations of oxacillin higher than 2 μg/ml. Isolates from 15 of the 28 specimens were positive by PCR for the mecA gene. Of the 15 mecA-positive MRSA isolates, 12 were from dairy cows and 3 were from chickens. Antimicrobial susceptibility tests of mecA-positive MRSA strains were performed by the disk diffusion method. All isolates were resistant to members of the penicillin family, such as ampicillin, oxacillin, and penicillin. All isolates were also susceptible to amikacin, vancomycin, and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole. To determine molecular epidemiological relatedness of these 15 animal MRSA isolates to isolates from humans, random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) patterns were generated by arbitrarily primed PCR. The RAPD patterns of six of the isolates from animals were identical to the patterns of certain isolates from humans. The antibiotypes of the six animal isolates revealed types similar to those of the human isolates. These data suggested that the genomes of the six animal MRSA isolates were very closely related to those of some human MRSA isolates and were a possible source of human infections caused by consuming contaminated food products made from these animals.
Science Daily
“The presence of antibiotics in waterways drives two primary concerns,” said Ken Carlson, associate professor of civil engineering and principal investigator of the project. ”The first is the potential toxic dangers of these compounds to fish, plants and other aquatic organisms – as well as to humans through drinking water – because water treatment plants generally cannot remove all of these compounds. There is also a potential, which we are currently studying, that these types of animal and human antibiotics have on contributing to the emergence of strains of disease-causing bacteria that are resistant to even high doses of drugs.”
Carlson added that future studies are needed to determine exactly how the antibiotics make their way into public waterways, how long the drugs stay in water and sediment and to better understand potential dangers to aquatic life, animals and humans. The presence of pharmaceutical compounds in urban wastewater discharge also is recognized as an important issue and is being studied by researchers across the country.
SGM : News
Pigs and other farm animals are harbouring major reservoirs of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, according to research presented today (Wednesday, 08 September 2004) at the Society for General Microbiology's 155th Meeting in Trinity College Dublin, by researchers from the University of Leeds. The scientists were concerned about the effects that decades of use of antibiotics to treat infections, prevent diseases, or promote growth, have had on the spread of antibiotic resistance genes in common farm bacteria.
"The European Commission banned some growth promoting antibiotics in 1999, and all growth promoters will be banned by 2006," says Melanie Thompson of the School of Biochemistry and Microbiology at Leeds University. "But the use of these antibiotics in animal husbandry for many years to treat illness, prevent infections and increase the growth rate and food efficiency of the animals has exerted a Darwin-style selective pressure on the different types of bacteria which survive in farm animals. For years we have been actively selecting for bacteria which possess genes capable of antibiotic resistance."
Soil Association
The identification of two new strains of the hospital superbug MRSA at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary (Daily Mail 18 June) has been loosely linked to the overuse of antibiotics (Professor Hugh Pennington, Dr. John Hood, Radio 4 interviews), however, the Soil Association claims today that the farm use of antibiotics is the real culprit in this case.
Soil Association Campaigns Advisor, Richard Young said, "There is now overwhelming evidence that the development of Vancomycin-resistant MRSA strains, long feared, but now found for the first time in a Glasgow hospital, have resulted from the use of antibiotic growth promoters in farm animals, not the overuse of antibiotics in hospitals." Vancomycin is chemically identical to Avoparcin which from 1976 until 1997 was the most widely used antibiotic growth promoter in the UK being feed to most chickens, turkeys, pigs and about 30 per cent of all cattle. Scientist at the Danish Veterinary Laboratories have demonstrated by DNA sequencing that Vancomycin resistance in man has come entirely from the use of Avoparcin and not the use of Vancomycin. Approximately 1 tonne of Avoparcin was used for every 1Kg. of Vancomycin.
Longer article - see link above
STUFF
The Government has ignored warnings that antibiotics fed to chickens pose a major risk to human health. Government reports obtained by the Sunday Star-Times reveal that as far back as 1999, an expert panel warned that antibiotics used in the poultry industry were breeding superbugs resistant to human medicine. The 1999 report warned drugs used to prevent disease in chickens could create resistance to front-line human medication crucial for treating respiratory infections such as pneumonia, sexually transmitted diseases and the hospital superbug MRSA
Scientific American
The increased use of antibiotics for medical purposes is the primary factor in the growing problem of ever-hardier bacteria. But researchers have suspected for some time that the administering of drugs to livestock might also be contributing to the emergence of antibiotic-resistant infections in humans. Determining a cause-and-effect relationship for this subtler scenario is difficult, however. To that end, findings published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences could prove insightful. According to the report, antibiotic use in farm animals may cause antibiotic resistance in humans to appear earlier than it would were the drugs not administered.
Union of Concerned Scientists
This is a sane detailed look at the Food Chain issues related to antibiotic resistance. Europe is already moving towards phasing them out as a growth stimulant. You'll find a myriad of facts here
Superbug Antibiotics Threatened By Factory Farmers
New Zealand Green MP Sue Kedgley reveals that a dramatic increase in the feeding of macrolide antibiotics to factory farmed animals is threatening our ability to treat human conditions from common respiratory infections to multiresistant gonorrhoea and the superbug MRSA.
A short introduction from Dave Roberts
This 12 minute introduction will help you grasp the key facts and the key issues surrounding drug resistant staph aureus (mersa, mursa)
