Antibiotic use in animals should be reduced to avoid human harm: study

The excessive use of antibiotics in animals is contributing as much to the global antibiotic resistance crisis as overuse in humans, according to a research paper recently released by the Imperial College London.

The majority of antibiotics produced by pharmaceutical companies are used in animals rather than humans and there have been outbreaks of antibiotic resistant bacteria in hospitals that have been traced back to bacteria from animals, according to the study led by researchers from the Imperial College London.

Although antibiotic use in animals in Europe is tightly regulated, it is less controlled in other parts of the world, researchers said.

One common means by which antibiotic resistant bacteria passes from animal to humans is through eating meat.

"If you eat a chicken that contains an antibiotic resistant bacteria, such as E.coli - and the chicken is not cooked properly - the bacteria can lodge in your gut. There is then a risk of it escaping from your intestines, and perhaps traveling to your gallbladder or urinary tract, where it may potentially trigger an infection that doesn't respond to antibiotics," said Dr Luke Moore from Imperial College London, co-author of the study.

Meat tissue may contain molecules of the antibiotic drug itself, and these molecules can travel to your intestines and increase antibiotic resistance in the bacteria that naturally reside in a person's gut, he added.

To tackle this issue, authorities should not only encourage the use of vaccination, as this would prevent antibiotic use, but also think about how to make immunization more cost effective for farmers, according to the study. Endit