Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have found that 11
per cent of people who are resistant to methicillin antibiotics picked up that
resistance from hog manure spread on nearby fields.
It’s the first time that type of link has been identified,
although previous research has found that people who work in hog barns are more
likely to acquire methicillin resistance, commonly called MRSA.
The risks go beyond reducing the effectiveness of
methicillin antibiotics to treat infections; MRSA resistance can easily become
resistance to several different antibiotics.
In the study, which was published online by JAMA Internal Medicine,
the researchers from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Johns Hopkins
Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore analyzed electronic health
records from Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania from 2005 to 2010.
The researchers identified 1,539 cases of community-associated MRSA
and 1,335 health care-associated MRSA from a total population of 446,480 patients.
They concluded that about 11 percent of community-acquired MRSA and
soft tissue infections could be attributed to crop fields fertilized with swine
manure. The researchers found similar but weaker associations of swine
operations with community-associated MRSA and skin and soft-tissue infection.
The finding is bound to increase pressure to ban the sub-therapeutic use of antibiotics in livestock and poultry.
At the very least, farmers ought to run frequent trials to determine whether the antibiotics are, in fact, still providing the growth-promoting results they desire. If there is widespread antibiotic resistance in their livestock and poultry, it's likely they are not only increasing health risks for people, but also wasting their money.
