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posted by janrinok on Saturday August 24 2019, @09:34PM   Printer-friendly
from the but-not-soycows dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Deadly superbug outbreak in humans linked to antibiotic spike in cows

A deadly outbreak of multi-drug resistant Salmonella that sickened 225 people across the US beginning in 2018 may have been spurred by a sharp rise in the use of certain antibiotics in cows a year earlier, infectious disease investigators reported this week.

From June 2018 to March of 2019, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identified an outbreak of Salmonella enterica serotype Newport. The strain was resistant to several antibiotics, most notably azithromycin—a recommended treatment for Salmonella enterica infections. Before the outbreak, azithromycin-resistance in this germ was exceedingly rare. In fact, it was only first seen in the US in 2016.

Yet in the 2018-2019 outbreak, it reached at least 225 people in 32 states. Of those sickened, at least 60 were hospitalized and two died. (Researchers didn't have complete health data on everyone sickened in the outbreak.)

Infectious disease researchers investigating the cases traced the infections back to beef from the US and soft cheeses from Mexico (mostly queso fresco, which is typically made from unpasteurized milk). Genetic testing suggests that cows in both countries are carrying the germ.

In a report published August 23 by the CDC, the investigators note that just a year earlier, the Food and Drug Administration recorded a spike in the use of antibiotics called macrolides by cattle farmers. From 2016 to 2017, cattle farmers increased their use of macrolide antibiotics by 41%. Macrolides are a class of antibiotics that includes azithromycin. Because antibiotics within a class work to kill bacteria in similar ways, bacterial resistance to one drug in a class could lead to resistance to other drugs in the same class.

The investigators suggest that the surge in macrolide use could have encouraged the rise and spread of the azithromycin-resistant Newport strain.

"Because use of antibiotics in livestock can cause selection of resistant strains, the reported 41% rise in macrolide use in US cattle from 2016 to 2017 might have accelerated carriage of the outbreak strain among US cattle," they wrote.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 26 2019, @02:48AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 26 2019, @02:48AM (#885480)

    The reason why they hit coop dairies is that they have a propensity to sell raw milk. Raw milk is linked to around 13% of all food-borne illness outbreaks every year and the vast majority of dairy outbreaks (since they started tracking the number is almost 97% vs a little over 3% where it was pasteurized or had unknown status). This is a huge relative risk because most of the milk sold is pasteurized.