Drug resistance: Does antibiotic use in animals affect human health?
10 November, 2018
Antibiotic resistance is a global public health crisis. In this Spotlight feature, we look at the use of antibiotics in animals and its consequences for human health, covering research presented recently at the London Microbiome Meeting.
Antibiotic resistance poses a serious threat to public health, both in the United States and globally.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), antibiotic resistance is responsible for 25,000 annual deaths in the European Union and 23,000 annual deaths in the U.S. As many as 2 million U.S. individuals develop a drug-resistant infection each year.
By the year 2050, some researchers predict that antibiotic resistance will cause 10 million deaths every year, surpassing cancer as the leading cause of mortality worldwide.
Some of the factors that have led to this crisis include the overprescription of antibiotics, poor sanitation and hygiene practices in hospitals, and insufficient laboratory tests that can detect an infection quickly and accurately.
An additional factor that may contribute to drug resistance in humans is the overuse of antibiotics in farming and agriculture. Using antibiotics in animals may raise the risk of transmitting drug-resistant bacteria to humans either by direct infection or by transferring "resistance genes from agriculture into human pathogens," researchers caution.
So, how are antibiotics currently being used in animals, and what might be the implications for human health? At the London Microbiome Meeting, which took place in the United Kingdom, Nicola Evans — a doctoral researcher in structural biology at King's College London — shared some of her insights on these issues.
In her presentation, Evans drew from the work she conducted at the U.K. Parliament, which can be read in full here. In this Spotlight feature, we report on the key findings from her talk.
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