Farmers Carry Multidrug-Resistant Staph For Weeks Into Local Communities

An anonymous reader writes: Fresh research out of the UNC Gillings and JHU Bloomberg schools of public health shows industrial farm workers are carrying livestock-associated, multidrug-resistant staph into local communities for weeks at a time. "Among the [22 people tested], 10 workers carried antibiotic-resistant strains of the bacteria in their noses for up to four days. Another six workers were intermittent carriers of the bacteria. The 10 workers found to carry the bacteria persistently had strains associated with livestock that were resistant to multiple drugs, and one also carried MRSA. Three more of the workers tested positive for strains of S. aureus that were not resistant to antibiotics. So in total, 86 percent of the workers in the study carried the S. aureus bacteria, compared with about one-third of the population at large, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention." This problem has grown since its last mention on Slashdot. Unfortunately, massive industrial lobbying continues to neuter government action.

Comments

Natural immunity

[BitZtream]

Good, this indicates that doctors and people who think they should take antibiotics like vitamins haven't completely screwed up our natural immunities and that most of the world still fights off this infections even though drugs no longer work on them.

Can we please get back to the point where we take antibiotics when we're in need of them, not just because we might have an infection or have a mild infection?

I'm all for taking them in the cases where it will be life threatening not to, but FFS not just because we're sick. We're making all of these things capable of fighting off the drugs and getting ourselves to the point where first world countries with antibiotics are going to be less safe than 3rd world shit holes where the people at least have functional immune systems that can fight off what they see in their environment.

We have survived for hundreds of thousands of years without taking daily antibiotic doses, why do some people and worse still some doctors think we should take them like candy now when someone gets the sniffles.

Re:Natural immunity

[davester666]

I believe the answer to your question is "No", because Pez dispensers need something to dispense, and doctors have chosen antibiotics as the pez of choice.

Re:Natural immunity

[Anonymous Coward]

The widespread use of antibiotics for every little thing has largely been eliminated in the medical community. The problem these days is farmers overusing them on animals. And by overuse I mean "routinely give whether it is necessary or not." THIS is what is producing antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria, and THIS is what will create the next pandemic.

Re:Natural immunity

[Anonymous Coward]

As a Doctor, I will agree. As a business man (who must run practice), I say this:

1. Pay me when you are well.
2. Don't expect a free diagnosis.
3. Visit me when your healthy so I can have a baseline to go from.
4. Don't take your medications until you feel better, and then stop.
5. Don't ask for medications. Yes, I have heard of the ones you want. I think I can figure out when to dispense it.
6. Get the meds I tell you to take.
7. If you are going to get a second opinion, just tell me - and have those records sent to my office.

Re:Natural immunity

[Firethorn]

They used to issue sugar pills instead, which might actually be tastier than the Pez, and more effective the way antibiotics are going.

As for the farmers - it's because giving animals antibiotics during specific periods of their growth cycle increases their growth significantly. I remember reading an article that they don't even use more antibiotics - the courses prevent enough sickness that farmers that ONLY give antibiotics to sick animals, at much higher doses, actually use just as many antibiotics.

Antibiotic use remaining stable
Increasing growth

Re:Natural immunity

[whoever57]

the courses prevent enough sickness that farmers that ONLY give antibiotics to sick animals, at much higher doses, actually use just as many antibiotics.

You seem to be under the same misapprehnsion as much of the farming community -- that high doses of antibiotics are dangerous, whereas the reverse is true. Low doses are far more likely to cause resistance than high doses given for the proper lenght of time.

Re:Natural immunity

[philip.paradis]

Given that you bothered to reference "lenght (sic) of time," I find it disheartening that you have also demonstrated apparent failure to comprehend or intelligently consider bounding problems, population density, transmission risks and rates, practical effects of seemingly low mutation rates, microbiology, and systems thinking. In short, all activities involving large scale administration of antibiotics to livestock at dosages resulting in appreciable treatment/prevention efficacy are practices which drive substantial and increasing risks to public health.

The math doesn't lie, and the trending curves of probabilities associated with widespread epidemics aren't exactly uplifting. I'll make a preemptive recommendation that you suppress the urge to post anything resembling a cliché "citation needed" response here. Given the circumstances at hand, devotion of your time to even a cursory review of the aforementioned subject matter would likely be a more productive activity. Such study will necessarily involve your review of all citations referenced in said materials, review of nested citations, etc. You wouldn't want to compound foolishness with yet more foolishness, would you?

I'm willing to admit that I may be entirely wrong in my assessment of your level of knowledge, with the corollary that you are simply betting that your benefits will outweigh your risk in this area for the duration of your lifespan. However, given that I know nothing of your mode of living or the measures of your personal resource reserves on hand for reaction/relocation/adaptation/insulation in response a large scale communicable disease crisis, I must hazard a guess that you're either (A) dangerously ignorant of reality or (B) very well prepared to deal with things turning shitty in a hurry. It is my measured estimation that the odds of your membership in the intersecting set are quite low, given your mid-range UID and the generally incongruous nature of the respective attributes of the A and B sets.

Re:Natural immunity

[angel'o'sphere]

Three wrongs in one so short sentence :)
It increases growth because: we don't know why, we only observed this 'empirically'
it kills the gut bacteria : unlikely, the dose is to low for that, and it would contradict the third point:
and then food is not processed optimally. if the food is not processed optimal, the animal would have _less_ energy and nutrition to grow; so that can't be the reason!

Re:Natural immunity

[BringsApples]

Ruir is correct. Antibiotics do kill gut bacteria, resulting in food not getting processed, rotten food remaining in the system, building up and making the animal fat and heavy. This makes the animal tired all of the time, resulting in the animal doing less, and getting, well, fatter (same thing happens in humans - ever seen anyone with a big bloated belly, skinny legs, lazy, unhappy...). There is no such thing as a "low dose of antibiotics" for animals, because antibiotics are meant to kill bacteria. And when you give an animal an antibiotic based on a time frame, rather than a sickness, you can bet that the only bacteria that's even there to kill is in the stomach.

This whole idea of giving animals regular treatments of antibiotics is why we have a lot of the problems that we have in the food market today. See, animals have an extraordinary ability to eat correctly on their own, even medicate themselves with various types of grass (that they do not normally eat, think of dogs or cats eating grass) at times. Cows that are grass-fed, have their horns, and allowed to graze where they want are very healthy, almost always. Anyone really interested in this stuff should look up Rudolf Steiner's talks made into a book called "Agriculture". Fascinating stuff.

Re:Natural immunity

[BringsApples]

I'm no doctor, and this is off-topic, so take this as you will. But I had the same type of situation, to many antibiotics for a sinus infection, resulted in a bunch of stomach problems - getting backed up all the time, allergic to wheat suddenly, all that. It took me about 4 years to really understand what happened, because doctors weren't able to do anything but tell me "You're allergic to wheat, go on a glutten-free diet."

What I did do eventually is go on a 5-day fast. I know it may sound crazy. But what happens is that all of the bacteria in your guts sorta goes away and you're left with a nice feeling. The most important factor in the whole fast, is breaking the fast. Introduce probiotics this way:
Drink kefir
eat raw fruit
drink vegetable broths
drink raw milk if you can find it - plain yogurt will do good too

There are other probiotics that you can find, check out what looks good to you. It's very important that you re-introduce food into your system slowly, or you're go into shock, or worse. After I did this, I have no more stomach problems, and no more wheat allergy. Of course you may want to consult a doctor before doing this.

Re:Natural immunity

[angel'o'sphere]

No the asshat is you and our parent.
If gut bacterias are killed, and the food is not "processed" you can not become fat. Nor does a cow. Super simple. You can only become fat from food that _actually is processed_
Hence the claim low level antibiotics would kill gut bacterias in a way that you end up fat is scientific utter nonsense.

Re:Natural immunity

[drdread66]

This. For the love of god, people need to mod the parent up. In classic Slashdot fashion, the entire conversation on this thread has missed the point, which is that the farm workers are carrying these antibiotic-resistant bacteria BECAUSE THEY CAME IN CONACT WITH LIVESTOCK THAT CARRY THE BACTERIA.

Why do the livestock carry these bacteria? Because they were fed low doses of antibiotics for long times. Antibiotics work great when you use a nice high dose for a specified period of time, and kill all the targeted bacteria. If you use low doses that don't kill all the bacteria, then some survive and eventually the survivors evolve a resistance to the antibiotics.

By using these low doses of antibiotics in livestock, we are *helping* bacteria develop resistance to the very drugs we use to treat those same bacterial infections in humans. In other words, we are setting the stage for an epidemic of disease that we can't treat because we rendered the treatment tools ineffective.

MRSA is the first. What this article is pointing out is that more are on the way, because they now have direct evidence that the resistant bacteria have a means of getting from the livestock to human populations.

This article ain't a political discussion, folks. It's a canary in a coal mine.

Animals with more rights than humans

[penguinoid]

The sad thing is that nowadays if you have the sniffles you can't get antibiotics without going to a doctor, and yet if your pet guppy isn't looking so good you can get some for your aquarium. And farmers seem to think antibiotic is an essential nutrient, no problem so long as it's not for humans! But try to get some for yourself and you'll get the lecture about antibiotic resistance. Unless it's for your soap.

On the other hand, at least they have a few antibiotics reserved for humans in real trouble, but on the other hand antibiotics everywhere breed antibiotic resistant bacteria, and many of the mechanisms bacteria use for antibiotic resistance give them total or partial immunity to other antibiotics.

Re:Animals with more rights than humans

[vivian]

Hopefully you can't get antibiotics even after seeing the doctor, if you only have sniffles.
Antibiotics generally don't work on viruses, which is what usually causes sniffles.

Re:Farmers != Farm Workers

[rahvin112]

Ah blame the migrant. Neat trick you did there. Almost all livestock in the US are fed low dose antiboitics throughout their life. This isn't to keep them healthy, it's to provide weight gain.

Almost every chunk of meat you buy in the US contains antibiotics unless you intentionally exclude all but carefully labeled meat products. Animals being fed antibiotics excrete those antibiotics into the environment through their urine, feces and even through their skin. Being under constant exposure to environmental antibiotics through contact with waste products, the animals themselves and their feed which contains the antibiotics is no doubt going to lead to evolution of resistance in the bacteria inhabiting your body.

Lets play the game of most likely answer, that the migrants are taking over the counter antibiotics while they are outside the US when many never leave the US for any extended period. OR, that exposure to the environmental antibiotics used in animal production is what's causing it. If you think the most probable answer is the first as you suggested I can't help you.

When self interest supersedes the common good....

[felixrising]

Tragedy of the commons: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...

Re:Farmers != Farm Workers

[NoKaOi]

RTFP (read the fucking paper).

While I'm sure you're much more of an expert then the researches who actually conducted this study, they do specify that the strains present are from livestock based on genetic testing. The introduction in the paper specifies why those strains are livestock-associated and what that means.

Here's the link, since you seem to have missed it even though the link is the first two words of the summary:
http://oem.bmj.com/content/ear...

So it seems to me that responsible researchers would go a bit farther before reporting: Like by doing genetic testing on the strains of bug in the various workers and the livestock, and running models on the results to try to identfy whether the bugs are from the herd or the workers.

So it seems to me that a responsible commenter would go a bit farther before accusing the researchers of not thinking of something that they in fact did think of and went to great effort to do genetic testing on hundreds of samples for. But I guess you couldn't be bothered to at least RTFA (read the fucking abstract).

I'm actually pretty impressed that the summary linked to the actual paper and not just the journalist article. I'm not impressed that you didn't at least read the abstract before commenting.

Re:When self interest supersedes the common good..

[gweihir]

Indeed. Or restated in simpler form: A community that does not keep its egoistic idiots under control, eventually collapses. That seems to be the primary problem of the human race at this time.

Your favourite ID doctor and mine

[Truth_Quark]

Good, this indicates that doctors and people who think they should take antibiotics like vitamins haven't completely screwed up our natural immunities and that most of the world still fights off this infections even though drugs no longer work on them.

The problem with Staph Aureus is that it's omnipresent in the respiratory tract and skin. It seems to have spent a long time evolving with immune systems, because it has two lines of defense (producing catalase and carrotenoids) which neutralise two of the chemicals that white blood cells use to break down foriegn bodies (superoxide and singlet oxygen). Additionally the protein A in the cell wall confuses the shit out of white blood cells, making them difficult to detect.

Add that to producing some really nasty toxins, and that's why a Staph Aureus bacteremia, even MSSA has about a 30% kill rate, even if you're in a modern hospital.

So it would be nice to have some antibiotics to fall back on, at least in the case of golden staph.

Can we please get back to the point where we take antibiotics when we're in need of them, not just because we might have an infection or have a mild infection?

Your favourite ID doctor, and mine, posted about this today. He has a solution:

The solution? We do not want to make antibiotics more toxic to the patient, so I suggest that every time there is an order for Zosyn and vancomycin (or whatever your decerebrate choice is at your institution) the ordering physician receives a short, painful shock from the keyboard. If you really think the patient needs the antibiotics you will take the shock. That would likely solve a lot of issues with inappropriate antibiotic use and be simpler than a stewardship program.

Although in this case the problem is prophylactic antibiotics given to livestock.

22 people tested

[jsepeta]

well we can just scale that up and apply the results to millions of farm workers worldwide (not)

this is such a small pool of tested people that the results cannot be applied beyond that specific group.