- Antibiotic resistance can be passed between bacteria found in the soil, researchers, including one of Indian origin, have found.
- Researchers from North Carolina State University in the US studied antibiotic resistance and how it can persist and spread among food animals, humans and the environment they all share.
- The study found that spreading manure on the ground as fertiliser can also spread antibiotic resistance to bacteria in the soil.
- Bacteria contain small DNA molecules known as plasmids.
- These plasmids are separate from the bacterias actual DNA, and can pick up and exchange genes between bacteria.
- The researchers took soil samples from a swine farm prior to and for three weeks after a manure spread.
- They had previously tested the manure for antibiotic resistant strains of salmonella, a pathogen responsible for causing the highest number of bacterial food borne illnesses in the US every year.
- After sampling the soil, researchers found that antibiotic-resistant salmonella bacteria were still present in the manure up to 21 days after it had been spread.
- They also discovered that a particular plasmid associated with the antibiotic-resistant salmonella from the manure, which weighed around 95 kilo-base (kb), was now turning up in different salmonella serotypes from the soil samples and every serotype with plasmid 95 kb was now resistant to antibiotics.
- This tells us that this particular plasmid is shuttling across different serotypes.
- It could explain why we find antibiotic resistant salmonella strains even on farms that do not use antibiotics.
- It seems that once antibiotic resistance takes hold, it doesn’t go away.
- These bacteria are simply better equipped to survive and so they prosper.
Source:TH