Bacterial Resistance To Last Resort Antibiotic Went From 1 Pig Farm to 5 Continents In 10 Years

[hatrack]

Resistance to the antibiotic of last resort spread from a single Chinese pig farm to human patients on five continents within the space of a decade, scientists have discovered.

The study is the first to identify the “shocking” speed with which a gene that gives bacteria such as E. coli and salmonella protection against drugs can jump across borders and from species to species. It could allow public health officials to detect outbreaks of resistance in their early stages while there is still time to suppress them.

EDIT

A team of scientists led by Francois Balloux, director of the Genetics Institute at University College London, analysed 451 samples of colistin-resistant bacteria from 31 countries to work out where the mutation had come from and how it had travelled around the world.

Their DNA detective work showed that the mcr-1 gene, which hardens bacteria against colistin, could be traced back to a single microbe that very probably emerged from the Chinese pig trade in about 2005. The mcr-1 gene then leapt across the boundaries between species in microscopic blobs called plasmids, which bacteria use to exchange fragments of DNA. Today it is so ubiquitous that it has been found in the water next to Brazilian beaches and in hospitals from South Africa and Saudi Arabia to Germany and Vietnam.

EDIT

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/drug-resistance-spreads-to-humans-at-shocking-rate-wpkt6fxt5

[Bayard]

1. Scary

The Walking Dead is starting to look prophetic.