ScienceDaily
(Nov. 15, 2012) — Washington State University researchers have found an
unlikely recipe for antibiotic resistant bacteria: Mix cow dung and soil, and
add urine infused with metabolized antibiotic. The urine will kill off
normal E. coli in the dung-soil mixture. But
antibiotic-resistant E. coli will survive in the soil to recolonize
in a cow's gut through pasture, forage or bedding.
"I
was surprised at how well this works, but it was not a surprise that it could
be happening," says Doug Call, a molecular epidemiologist in WSU's Paul G.
Allen School for Global Animal Health. Call led the research with an immunology
and infectious disease Ph.D. student, Murugan Subbiah, now a post-doctoral
researcher at Texas A & M. Their study appears in a recent issue of the
online journal PLOS ONE.
While
antibiotics have dramatically reduced infections in the past 70 years, their
widespread and often indiscriminate use has led to the natural selection of
drug-resistant microbes. People infected with the organisms have a harder time
getting well, with longer hospital stays and a greater likelihood of death.
Animals
are a major source of resistant bugs, receiving the bulk of antibiotics sold in
the U.S.
The
scientists focused on the antibiotic ceftiofur, a cephalosporin believed to be
helping drive the proliferation of resistance in bacteria like Salmonella
and E. coli. Ceftiofur has little impact on gut bacteria, says Call.
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