Flies, birds implicated in antibiotic resistant bacteria spread.

Flies, birds implicated in antibiotic resistant bacteria spread as new study has shown role of flies in spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.The study result shows that flies' ability to contaminate the environment has led to immense public health concerns In one study, the researchers found that 1% of hospital patients in two large cities in China were carrying colistin-resistant bacteria, despite the antibiotic not being used in human medicine.According to New Scientist, China has reserved colistin for veterinary use, with some 8,000 metric tons used each year, primarily in pig and poultry production. A ban on its use in the livestock industry will be enforced in China this month and colistin will begin to be used to treat people instead. The research team from Cardiff University, UK, has also been looking at resistant bacteria beyond the confines of hospitals. They found a quarter of E. coli bacteria sampled from chicken farms and from meat in grocery outlets was resistant to colistin, while a third was resistant to carbapenem. They also found high rates of bacteria with colistin- and carbapenam-resistant genes in dog feces on chicken farms and on flies at these farms, indicating that resistant bacteria have colonized beyond the farmed birds. The Cardiff team argues that flies’ ability to contaminate the environment has immense public health concerns and that fly transmission may be why hospital patients living far away from farms were not less likely to have a resistant infection during the summer than those living nearby. Wild birds, long associated with the spread of viral disease, may also be responsible for transmission.Resistant bacteria were also found in feces from swallows on farms in China, raising fears that they will carry these bacteria as they migrate, and potentially spreading resistance much further afield.