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Title: Humans or Animals? Global March of the Resistant Microbe

Author
item Cray, Paula

Submitted to: Meeting Abstract
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 12/3/2013
Publication Date: 12/6/2013
Citation: Cray, P.J. 2014. Humans or Animals? Global March of the Resistant Microbe. 14th Annual Nick Petry Workshop. December 6, 2013. Denver, Colorado.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Antimicrobial resistance continues to be a global problem. Pathogens are global regardless of whether they are food borne or not. An example of an early century pathogen is Vibrio cholera and related species. Vibrio were primarily associated with water sources and foodstuffs contaminated with water harboring Vibrio. However, this was largely solved in developing countries, antimicrobial resistance was not an issue, and supportive therapy was used to treat the disease while sanitation was applied to clean the environment. Interestingly, Vibrio still surfaces in developing countries like Haiti after natural disasters. Conversely, tuberculosis has evolved over the years and is now resistant to nearly all antimicrobials available for use. Although not a food borne pathogen, it too, can be transmitted globally and is a serious concern in human medicine. Food borne zoonoses present different challenges, particularly when dealing with Salmonella. Salmonella is ubiquitous and has been recovered from nearly all vertebrae. There are over 2600 serotypes and all have the potential to cause illness in humans. They survive well in temperature extremes; survive desiccated, in dust, organic matter, water, and the soil. They can adapt to acidic conditions. Each serotype appears to respond differently to each class of antimicrobials and strain response within a class of antimicrobials can also vary. This makes study of Salmonella particularly challenging when elucidating the relationship between the ecology/animal/human/drug complex. This presentation will relate the emerging resistance and surveillance of third generation cephalosporins in Salmonella and its global march first in humans then animal isolates across the globe and describe the difficulty in sorting out what happens when bacteria amplify in animal production environments and are further exposed to antimicrobials in the ecology of the environment – from our gut, the animal gut, the sea, the effect of the weather and weather/travel/trade disseminating bacteria. Resistance drives our need to derive newer generations of antimicrobials setting up the perfect scenario for cross resistance to develop to older generations of antimicrobials, many of which are in use in animal agriculture; and few, if any new drugs are in development in the foreseeable future. This presents a new challenge and call to action for future research programs.