antibiotic-resistant bacteria

As many as 28 million people would be pushed into poverty and global livestock production could fall by up to 7.5 percent if resistant bacteria overwhelm the healing powers of antibiotics, says the World Bank. The economic impact would be "similar to — and likely worse than — that caused by the 2008 financial crisis," but without hope of a recovery, says the Bank.

Antibiotics play a crucial role in treating disease in farm animals and plants, said the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in releasing an "action plan" to promote prudent use of antimicrobials. "Their use is essential to food security, to our well-being and to animal welfare," said the FAO, but the emergence of bacteria resistant to antibiotics is a threat to human health.

A patient treated at a New Jersey hospital carried a strain of E. coli bacteria that is resistant to colistin and carbapenem, two antibiotics that are administered as last-resort drugs against disease and infection. It was the first time that a resistance to two last-ditch antibiotics was found in the United States, and the detection "means there's likely more out there," says medical news site Stat.

A public-private partnership known as CARB-X plans to devote more than $350 million over five years "to one of the trickiest aspects of the problem of drug resistance: Encouraging pharmaceutical companies to make new antibiotics," says National Geographic. Antibiotics are expensive to develop but often a low-revenue product, so there is little research at a time bacterial resistance is an increasing threat to medicine.

For the second time since May, researchers reported discovering bacteria resistant to colistin, a last-resort antibiotic, in a patient receiving medical treatment, said Medscape Medical News. The discovery was part of an international search to gauge the prevalence of the resistant bacteria, which also have been found in livestock and are viewed as a salient threat to the antimicrobials used to treat and prevent disease.

Researchers found the "superbug" that is resistant to the last-ditch antibiotic used in treating human disease in seagulls on two continents, Europe and South America, writes Maryn McKenna in National Geographic. The discovery pinpoints one way the so-called MCR-1 gene, which confers resistance to colistin, is moving around the world.

As the deadline for an FDA plan to shift sales of medically-important antibiotics in the livestock industry from over-the-counter to prescription draws near, there are concerns among retailers and feed-industry officials that the transition may not go smoothly, says FeedNavigator.

Government scientists found the MCR-1 gene, which allows bacteria to overcome the last-resort antibiotics used against disease in humans, in a sample taken from a different pig than the first U.S. discovery, said a CDC official. The initial case, reported on the same day as discovery of a Pennsylvania woman with an infection that carried the MCR-1 gene, raised fears of "superbug" bacteria resistant to a broad array of antimicrobials.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) wants to slash agricultural use of colistin, a last-ditch antibiotic in treatment of infection and disease in humans, by two-thirds, said Reuters. The regulatory agency issued its call at the same time the MCR-1 gene, which enables bacteria to resist colistin, was identified for the first time in the United States in a human and separately in a sample from a hog.

A gene that protects bacteria against the last-resort antibiotics used against disease in humans "has been found in the United States for the first time — in a person and, separately, in a stored sample taken from a slaughtered pig," said Maryn McKenna at National Geographic's Germination Blog. Defense Department researchers say in a scientific journal the discovery "heralds the emergence of truly pan-drug resistant bacteria."

Without action to protect the efficacy of antibiotics and to develop new antimicrobials, 10 million people a year would die worldwide due to drug-resistant bacteria by 2050, said a study commissioned by the British government. The report called for coordinated action worldwide to reduce unnecessary use of antibiotics, pointing to animal agriculture in particular.

In their first meeting since 2009, agriculture ministers from the Group of Seven industrialized nations said they would "set up an international framework to smoothly share information on livestock epidemics, such as bird flu or foot-and-mouth disease, reports the Kyodo news service.

Along with corn and hay, cattle at Iowa State University's Beef Nutrition Farm are consuming small doses of bacteria as part of their daily rations. It's part of research into alternatives to the antibiotics that are a common tool in livestock health, says Harvest Public Media.

Some of the largest U.S. food processors and retailers, including Walmart, Cargill and Tyson Foods, are "urging Congress to build on investments in the Fiscal 2017 appropriations legislation that would help combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria," says Feedstuffs.

The British newspaper the Independent says fluoroquinolones, a class of antibiotics "banned on U.S. chicken farms a decade ago over links to the spread of potentially deadly bacteria in humans, are being used in significantly increased quantities by the British poultry industry."

In just two months, scientists in 19 countries have detected the presence of the MCR-1 gene that can make bacteria resistant to the antibiotic colistin, given to patients when other antimicrobials are ineffective, reports Bloomberg.