Antimicrobial resistance :rats a major link in antimicrobial resistance in animals and man.

The world is faced with the issue of drug-resistance, super bugs and antibiotic residue in animal-by-products,forcing producers to look critically at methods of production and handling of products to resolve these issues. 

The war against super bugs is super hot with various school of thoughts proposing various theories and solutions to resolve the issue to ensure better health for man and the food animals consumed. The environment has been know to play host to various disease agents and the host/carriers are also housed in the environment,creating an unending cycle of infection to diverse hosts. 

 Rats are ubiquitous,with the propensity to carry disease agents in their urine,feces,hair and feet.These creatures could actually be the missing link in the antibiotic resistance saga. 

 Rats presence in poultry houses,farms and pet homes result in feed/water contamination with urine/feces resulting in salmonellosis,which the farmer responds to using antibiotics. When the source of infection is not removed, there will be a continuous cycle of infection-reinfection and treatment with various antibiotics .

  The threat of rats to health of man and animals is real and must be properly understood to ensure the necessary strategy is incorporated. A recent study by scientist in the University of Colombia, has revealed the risk that rats pose:Rats can absorb disease agents from their local environment and spread them, according to a University of British Colombia new study. The results also indicate that the threat rats pose to the health of poultry and humans has been underestimated.

Researchers studied the feces of rats caught at an Abbotsford, B.C. poultry farm, and discovered they all carried avian pathogenic E. coli, a bacteria with the ability to cause disease in chickens and potentially humans. More than one quarter of the rats were carrying multi-drug resistant strains of the bacteria. 

The findings support lead author Chelsea Himsworth's theory that rats act as a "pathogen sponge," soaking up bacteria from their environment. If rats can absorb pathogenic E. coli, then they could potentially be a source of all sorts of other pathogens that we have not anticipated," said Himsworth, assistant professor in the UBC School of Population and Public Health and leader of the Vancouver Rat Project, a group aiming to address the knowledge gap about the health threats associated with rats. 

 Himsworth was surprised to find that the E. coli strains carried by the farm rats were very similar to those found in chickens, and totally different from E. coli strains found in urban rats. Basically, the rural rat gut looked like the poultry gut, and nothing like the urban rat gut . 

 This latest study follows previous research by Himsworth that found human pathogens, including MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) and C. difficile, in the feces of rats in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. 

 Rat infestations ought to be taken seriously," said Himsworth. "They need to be tackled with an educated, informed approach in collaboration with scientists and pest control professionals. There should be the development of municipal programs for managing rat infestations and rat-related issues. 

 Rodent control # rodenticide rodent bait # rodent proof.

RATS: THE UNCONVENTIONAL DISEASE CAUSING AGENT IN MAN AND ANIMALS.

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Cells from cow knee joints used to grow new cartilage tissue in laboratory.

An effort to develop a method for cartilage tissue engineering, researchers have successfully used cartilage cells from cow knee joints. By creating a successful method with conditions conducive to growing healthy cartilage tissue, the findings could help lead to a new treatment cure for osteoarthritis using stem cell-based tissue engineering, a new report suggests. In an effort to develop a method for cartilage tissue engineering, researchers at Umeå University in Sweden successfully used cartilage cells from cow knee joints. By creating a successful method with conditions conducive to growing healthy cartilage tissue, the findings could help lead to a new treatment cure for osteoarthritis using stem cell-based tissue engineering. This is according to a doctoral dissertation at Umeå University. Tissue engineering provides a possible solution to osteoarthritis. In their experiments, the researchers at Umeå University made findings that provided useful information for efforts to develop new methods to produce cartilage-like "neotissues" in a laboratory environment. In the engineering process, the cells, the signaling molecules and the scaffold, i.e. artificial support material, are combined to regenerate tissue at the damaged site in the joint. The process is difficult and much of what constitutes suitable growth factors and a mechanical loading environment is still unknown. Today, there is a huge variety of available synthetic and natural scaffolds. It is also unclear whether stem cells or primary cells are best suited. Using primary bovine chondrocytes, i.e. cartilage cells from cows, the researchers improved methods to grow cartilage tissue in a laboratory environment, producing tissue similar to tissue normally present in the human joints. In future, these results may help the development of neocartilage production for actual cartilage repair. For this, stem cells could be grown to provide unlimited amount of material for tissue engineering. However, more research is needed to improve the tissue quality and make it more structurally similar to the hyaline cartilage found in the human body. source; science daily.

HANDLING THE RAT MENACE..

. Rats have been linked to the spread of a lot of disease ,some are fatal while others can be treated.The best way to stay safe is by rodent control.The health risk posed by rats affects man, poultry,dogs and some other animals. Diseases occur as a result of interaction between hosts, agent and environment.Rats are no different from all other carriers,in this sense hence environment influences the infection and risk/rate of exposure. Living in a dirty,unkempt environment increases the chances of infection and consequent spread of infection.Rats are know to thrive where there is food and water, and most rats can eat anything. Living in close quarters with dogs, poultry and horses increases risk of infection.Living in highly populated environment surrounded by filth also poses risk of infection.Rats find their way to food industry and food processing plants posing a risk of food contamination from source. Rats are everywhere causing diseases by contamination through urine,feces, hair,and feet. Rats basically transfer these disease agents by contamination of feed,food,water,toys and clothing.The best way to avoid any disease is by proper pest control and maintenance of clean environment.The following are steps to keeps rats out;1) Use of rat traps 2) keep houses/farms rodent proof; by removing unfinished food, cover bins and keep them far away from homes. 3) rat adhesive boards 4) baits 5)proper waste management. 6) rat-proof your doors,windows in farms,homes and factory. Rats cause food wastage resulting in economic losses,when a food is contaminated by urine or feces,throw away immediately. If you suspect your pets toy is contaminated with rat urine throw away,same with clothing or any other contaminated material. Stay safe # avoid rat bites # dont eat rats # keep environment clean.

MEAT SAFETY.

A simple, rapid test to help ensure safer meat. Scientists now report a simple method that uses nanotubes to quickly detect spoilage. It could help make sure meats are safe when they hit store shelves. Transporting meats and seafood from the farm or sea to the market while they're still fresh is a high priority. But telling whether a product has gone bad isn't a simple process. 

Current strategies for measuring freshness can be highly sensitive to spoilage but require bulky, slow equipment, which prevents real-time analysis. Some newer methods designed to speed up the testing process have fallen short in sensitivity.

 Yanke Che and colleagues wanted to develop one simple test that could deliver both rapid and sensitive results. The researchers turned to highly fluorescent, hollow nanotubes that grow dim when they react with compounds given off by meat as it decomposes.

 To test the nanotubes, the team sealed commercial samples -- 1 gram each -- of pork, beef, chicken, fish and shrimp in containers for up to four days. When they exposed the portable system to a teaspoon of vapor emitted by the samples, it reacted in under an hour, fast enough to serve as a real-time measure of freshness. The researchers also found that if the tubes' glow dulled by more than 10 percent, this meant a sample was spoiled. Story source;American Chemical Society.

RAT FLEAS SPREAD HEART DAMAGING BACTERIA.

Bacteria that can cause serious heart disease in humans are being spread by rat fleas, sparking concern that the infections could become a bigger problem in humans. Research published in the Journal of Medical Microbiology suggests that brown rats may be carrying the bacteria. Since the early 1990s, more than 20 species of Bartonella bacteria have been discovered. They are considered to be emerging zoonotic pathogens, because they can cause serious illness in humans worldwide from heart disease to infection of the spleen and nervous system. "A new species called Bartonella rochalimae was recently discovered in a patient with an enlarged spleen who had travelled to South America," said Professor Chao-Chin Chang from the National Chung Hsing University in Taiwan. "This event raised concern that it could be a newly emerged zoonotic pathogen. Therefore, we decided to investigate further to understand if rodents living close to human environment could carry this bacteria." Scientists have found that rodents carry several pathogenic species of Bartonella, such as B. elizabethae, which can cause endocarditis and B. grahamii, which was found to cause neuroretinitis in humans. Although scientists are unsure about the main route of transmission, these infections are most likely to be spread by fleas. Ctenophthalmus nobilis, a flea that lives on bank voles, was shown to transmit different species of Bartonella bacteria. These pathogens have also been found in fleas that live on gerbils, cotton rats and brown rats. The scientists analysed bacteria found in Rattus norvegicus in Taiwan. The brown rat is also the most common rat in Europe, When the DNA of the bacteria was analyzed, it was discovered that a strain that is most closely related to B. rochalimae, which has been isolated recently from a human infection in the United States. The researchers took samples from 58 rodents, including 53 brown rats, 2 mice (Mus musculus) and 3 black rats (Rattus rattus). 6 of the rodents were found to be carrying Bartonella bacteria; 5 of these were brown rats. Four of the rodents were carrying B. elizabethae, which can cause heart disease in humans, and one of the black rats was found to be harbouring B. tribocorum. However, the scientists noticed one strain that had not been identified in rodents previously. The strain was finally shown to be close to B. rochalimae. These results raise concerns about the existence of other reservoirs and vectors for this emerging infection. Source; journal of medical microbiology.

Teenager infected with rat-bite fever from her pet rodent .

A 17-year-old woman was infected with the rare, but treatable rat-bite fever, that developed from pet rodents that lived in her bedroom, report the doctors who treated her.Rat-bite fever has been reported in writings dating as far back as 2300 years. It was originally described as a disease of the poor, but these days most cases occur in lab workers or in children with pet rodents.The condition is often goes unrecognized and undiagnosed. Most cases of rat-bite fever involve a bite or scratch from a rodent, but there are several reports of infection without direct bacterial inoculation. The young woman was admitted to hospital with pain in her right hip and lower back that had continued for two days and led to immobility. Over the proceeding two weeks, she had an intermittent fever, nausea and vomiting, and a pink rash on her hands and feet.Her nausea and vomiting improved, but the fever continued, and she had tenderness of a joint in her pelvis, and pain in her right leg. The doctors learnt that the woman had numerous pets including a dog, cat, horse and three pet rats. The rodents lived in her bedroom. One of these rats had died 3 weeks prior to onset of her symptoms.A blood test returned positive for --the most common cause of ratbite fever.The disease can have mortality as high as 13%, if left untreated. Fortunately, the woman underwent 4 weeks of antibiotics. After 5 days, her rash and fever disappeared, and the joint pain in her pelvis improved over the following weeks. She made a full recovery. Story source ; Science daily.