February 17, 2005
Antibiotic overuse in feed may be linked to human food poisoning
A new report concludes that patients with antibiotic-resistant infections caused by slmonella bacteria are more likely to suffer potentially deadly bloodstream infections than are patients with nonresistant salmonella.
Salmonella, a leading bacterial cause of food poisoning, is responsible for 1.4 million food poisoning cases and about 500 deaths per year. The study, published in the February 15, 2005, issue of the Journal of Infectious Diseases, noted that the antibiotic resistance in salmonella bacteria chiefly results from using antibiotics in food animals.
Dr David Wallinga, a physician with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy in Minneapolis, US, said that the study reveals the health consequences of Salmonella bacteria becoming more resistant to antibiotics.
He also added that treating increasingly resistant bugs may push up healthcare costs.
Among patients infected with a particular salmonella type, S. typhimurium, researchers found that patients infected by antibiotic-resistant Salmonella were much more likely to suffer severe complications such as bloodstream infections and to require hospitalization than were patients whose salmonella infections were not resistant.
With the overuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture linked to human health problems, the need to reduce the massive overuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture becomes even more urgent, say scientists.
The large-scale, industrialized operations that dominate meat production in the U.S. today routinely feed poultry, swine and beef cattle the same types of antibiotics that doctors use in human medicine, such as sulfa drugs and penicillins. Massive quantities of these medically important antibiotics - an estimated 13 million pounds each year - are used as animal feed additives. These antibiotic feed additives are not used to treat sick animals, but for growth promotion and to compensate for the stressful and crowded conditions within the industrial animal operations.
