There is evidence that superbugs can spread from pigs to humans. The discovery shows fears that intensive use of antibiotics on farms is leading to the spread of resistant microbes.
The link was discovered by a group of people, including Soren Persson at the Statens Serum Institute and Dorte Frees of the University of Copenhagen.
According to Bejaoui's findings, C difficile is a source of antimicrobial resistance genes that can be exchanged between animals and humans.
C difficile is resistant to all but three antibiotics used today. Some strains have genes that allow them to produce toxins that can cause inflammation in the gut and life-threatening illness in the elderly. One of the biggest antibiotic resistance threats is the bacterium. In the US, it cost the healthcare system more than $1 billion to cause 223,900 infections and 12,800 deaths.
Doctors and scientists have warned for years that over-prescribing antibiotics for trivial complaints or infections caused by viruses which do not respond to antibiotics threatens to lead to the spread of resistance to this critically important class of drugs.
They have stressed that the problem is being intensified by the widespread use of antibiotics on farms where they are given to animals in order to keep them in poor, basic conditions where disease can easily spread.
The result has been an increase in resistance to antibiotics. Margaret Chan, the former director general of the World Health Organization, said that antimicrobial resistance is on the rise in Europe and elsewhere in the world. Replacement treatments are more expensive, more toxic, and may require treatment in intensive care units.
According to the Union for International Cancer Control, the number of people who die from drug-resistant infections could reach 10 million by the year 2050, costing more than 100tn dollars to global health services.
Pressure is being put on doctors to reduce the use of antibiotics because of these fears. Medical authorities have pointed out that two-thirds of antibiotics aren't used on humans but are given as agricultural enhancers. This is done to prevent diseases in animals that are being kept in bad conditions.
The team led by Bejaoui focused on investigating the prevalence of C difficile in farm animals. In this case, pigs were studied and the results were compared to see if there was a match in humans. C difficile samples were screened for the presence of the disease and genetic testing was used to identify the toxin and drug resistance genes in the samples.
The strains isolated in pigs were the same as those found in humans.
Of particular concern is the large amount of genes that confer resistance to the class of antibiotics called aminoglycosides. The genes are spread to other susceptible species. There is more evidence that the use of antimicrobials in animal husbandry selects for dangerously resistant human pathogens.
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