MRSA in chickens used for Food JoAnn Guest

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MRSA in chickens used for Food

JoAnn Guest

Sep 01, 2006 17:45 PDT

http://tahilla.typepad.com/mrsawatch/mrsa_and_the_food_ch/index.html

 

Food Chain Factor in Drug Resistance

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.

 

Wednesday, 19 April 2006 in MRSA and the Food Chain | Permalink |

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Food chain disease critic dies

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.

 

Friday, 24 March 2006 in MRSA and the Food Chain | Permalink |

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MRSA in Chickens used for food

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.

 

Friday, 11 February 2005 in MRSA and the Food Chain | Permalink |

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Animal feed a Resistance Factor

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.

Thursday, 10 February 2005 in MRSA and the Food Chain | Permalink |

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MRSA in Major Food Animals and Their Potential Transmission to Humans

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 ìg/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.

 

Thursday, 10 February 2005 in MRSA and the Food Chain | Permalink |

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Antibiotics Used For Growth In Food Animals Making Their Way Into

Waterways

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.

 

Tuesday, 26 October 2004 in MRSA and the Food Chain | Permalink |

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Food chain breeds resistance

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. "

 

Tuesday, 12 October 2004 in MRSA and the Food Chain | Permalink |

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Oraganic lobby link farm medicine to MRSA

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

 

Saturday, 11 September 2004 in MRSA and the Food Chain | Permalink |

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Drug-pumped poultry fuels human risk

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

 

 

Monday, 19 July 2004 in MRSA and the Food Chain | Permalink |

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Agricultural Antibiotic Use Could Contribute to Drug Resistance

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.

 

Saturday, 17 July 2004 in MRSA and the Food Chain | Permalink |

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Antibiotic Resistance & the food chain

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

 

Sunday, 27 June 2004 in MRSA and the Food Chain | Permalink |

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Food Chain Threat

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.

 

 

JoAnn Guest

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www.geocities.com/mrsjoguest/Diets