MRSA - "Farming Cannot Be Sustained At These Levels If It Is Generating These Types Of Resistance"
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MRSA first appeared in 1961 and epidemic strains of this difficult-to-treat bacterium have since spread worldwide in hospitals and the community. In the farming world, MRSA causes bovine mastitis – an infection of cows' udders – affecting both animal welfare and milk yields. Garcia-Alvarez was working with Dr Mark Holmes on bovine mastitis when she came across one of the 'curious anomalies'.
The strain was resistant to antibiotics but in the standard molecular test was negative for the presence of mecA – the gene responsible for methicillin resistance. She had the isolates retested and then sequenced at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. It turned out that she had discovered a new strain of MRSA. Its antibiotic resistance is carried not by mecA but by mecC, a gene that is so genetically dissimilar to mecA that it can't be picked up by the standard molecular test used to define MRSA but only by DNA sequencing.
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Mastitis is the most common infectious disease of dairy cattle, affecting the welfare of cows and, according to one estimate, costs the UK dairy industry around £170 million per year. Its control and treatment relies on the use of millions of doses of therapeutic and prophylactic antibiotics every year. "Our research on MRSA is pointing to the fact that although we are not on the precipice of having the whole system collapse through selection of bugs that are even more resistant or having husbandry systems that make it impossible to eliminate them, we are closer to the precipice than we would like to be," said Holmes. "As it is, S. aureus is considered impossible to eliminate in dairy herds – you have to live with it once you've got it. "Farmers and veterinarians are in a constant battle to improve the health of dairy cows, yet farming cannot be sustained at these levels if it is generating these types of resistance. Moreover, we can't predict how these bacterial strains will evolve – they could become more resistant, more virulent or better able to jump between species." Holmes views the interface between veterinary medicine and human medicine as crucial to understanding infectious diseases such as MRSA: "There is very little research on S. aureus mastitis in cows in comparison to research into it as a human pathogen, and yet now we're beginning to see exactly the same organism being found in people and in cows. This means that we should be thinking about the epidemiology of disease control and the development of antibiotic resistance in both species. Understanding how new strains emerge will help us to understand the growing public health problem of antibiotic resistance."
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http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-superbugs.html