(from Environmental Health News) Drug resistant infections are fast turning into a large issue, driven in large part through an extreme overuse of antibiotics in individuals and for livestock production. Now, a new study from Tufts University’s veterinary college has demonstrated that antibiotic-resistance has spread in the hospitals and farms into nature, where it’s impacting wildlife.
Investigators gathered around 600 types of feces from crows from four distinct states to understand what is happening. Along with the bacteria’s vancomycin resistance, these were also immune to other antibiotics normally used in medicine and livestock feed.
The outcomes of the study are actually quite worrying, because the bacteria’s drug resistance can come from several sources and it is difficult to ascertain specifically where it comes from. The investigators theorized that waste sites can become a possible generator of this issue with birds. “Because birds are really so mobile, it is possible they might get resistance genes from several sources within their journeys,” said Julie Ellis, one among many of the study researchers working on this.