Hog-farm workers carry drug-resistant bacteria
A small-scale study in North Carolina “suggests that nearly half of workers who care for animals in large industrial hog farming operations may be carrying home livestock-associated bacteria in their noses, and that this potentially harmful bacteria remains with them up to four days after exposure,” says Johns Hopkins University. “Much of the Staphylococcus aureus bacteria they carried were antibiotic resistant, likely due to the use of drugs both to treat sick hogs and to promote hog growth to ready them for market sooner.” The longer the bacteria persist in the workers, the greater the opportunity for them to spread, says the study, published in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
The study followed 22 hog workers in North Carolina for two weeks and gathered nasal swabs twice a day. Three-fifths of the workers carried at least one type of Staph at some point during the study. Ten of the 22 workers were identified as persistent carriers of livestock-associated Staph, meaning the strains appeared in every nasal sample or all but one sample. The researchers now are studying whether the hog workers with persistent drug-resistant bacteria are transmitting it to their families or communities.
The study, “Persistence of livestock-associated antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus aureus among industrial hog operation workers in North Carolina over 14 days,” is available here.