Nathan Sandage
BIOL 1610 10AM T-Th
12/07/2016
The article I read was
called: New Kind of Antibiotic Resistance Shows Up on a Hog Farm. This article
was about a new antibiotic resistant bacteria called carbapenem-resistant
Enterobacteriaceae (CRE). This new bacteria was discovered on a farm in the Midwest
United States. The article said that it was the first discovery of this sort of
drug resistant bacteria in the United States. The article then talks about
different ways the drug may have shown up on a farm, since most of these type
bacteria would be at a hospital. One theory is that farm employees may have
picked the bacteria up at a hospital and brought it back to the farm. Another interesting
thing the article talked about was how it was weird for the bacteria to stay so
long in the hogs when the drug it is resistant to is not used in agriculture.
But later it talked about how a different drug that is similar to the drug
used, is used in agriculture. The article went into how the drug resistant DNA is
on the plasmids of the bacteria instead of the chromosomes of the bacteria.
This is important because it is easily spread to other bacteria in this way. At
the end of the article it talks about how everything is very new and researches
are working to find out the health impacts of the new discovery.
I thought that this was
an interesting article to read because recently in class the topic was brought
up. In class we watched the video of drug resistant E.coli. This article was interesting because it showed
a real-world example of how this happens. And how evolution and natural
selection is always moving and changing the way things are. The article talked
about how hard these kind of drug resistant bacteria are to fight and how that
the bacteria jumping between people and animal and back can be very dangerous.
This was a very interesting article to read and it was interesting to get a
real world example of what we saw and learned in class.
That is really interesting and almost more interesting that they aren't positive of how it got there. It really makes you wonder. My biggest question are how are the animals? Are they reacting to the bacteria? Has their behavior changed? Or has it not affected them at all? J. RYAN
ReplyDeleteSo you talked a little bit about how bacteria jumping from people, to animals, and then back to people again can be dangerous. Why is this so dangerous? I guess this piggy backs off the previous question a little since if it isn't harmful to the animals, why would it then be harmful to us if it came back?
ReplyDeleteMatt N.
DeleteHey Matt,
DeleteI was also curious on how bacteria jumping from animals to people can be dangerous. I found a complicated article to read but this is one of the main passages that talks about it:
The public health consequences of zoonotic antibiotic resistance are invariably difficult to assess for a number of reasons: the epidemiology is highly complex because it involves complex production and distribution systems of animals and food, it involves the spread of bacterial clones as well as resistance genes, and, finally, the impact on public health includes several end points that are difficult to determine, such as infections that would otherwise not have occurred, increased morbidity and mortality, and higher costs of treatment of disease.
The article is found at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK114485/
It seems like one of the main concerns is the possibility of infections occurring that normally wouldn't have if the transfer didn't happen. That can bring treatment failures and death to patients.
Interesting and scary.
Hope that helps.
Thanks,
RW
This article is very applicable to the medical field. There are a very limited number of antibiotics that doctors have to prescribe. The rate that bacteria is becoming resistant to these drugs is scary. It took eleven days for bacteria to evolve to withstand 1000 times the amount of antibiotic it would take to kill the original bacteria. It is very interesting to see a naturally occurring example of bacteria changing to be drug resistant.
ReplyDeleteTanner P.
ReplyDeleteEventually, bacteria will have become resistant to drugs that doctors prescribe to sick patients. It seems to me that there is no telling how long that will take. IS there any research being done for alternative methods to cure bacterial diseases besides the use of antibiotics?
this article makes me wonder how many other bacteria and viruses can arrise from farms that have so many animals in such high concentrations. this makes me think that's a perfect breeding and development ground for smaller organisms if it wasn't treated properly.
ReplyDeleteMC
Do you think that the bacteria becomes more deadly or potent &/or mutated when it jumps from humans to animals and then back?
ReplyDeleteHW
I don't think that bacteria gets more deadly by transferring to a pig then back to a human. Evolution through natural selection is not a ladder to perfection. Traits are selected that help an organism survive to pass on its genetics. Since humans and pigs are different ecosystems with different immune systems, I believe that different traits would be selected for the bacteria to survive in the two different organisms.
DeleteT. Anderson
This was very interesting especially that it happened on a farm and not a hospital. How much was the bacteria in surrounding hospitals looked at after this bacteria had been found?
ReplyDeleteKI
This article sheds light on how natural selection is always adapting so organisms can thrive. A mutation that makes the plasmid resistant to antibiotics is a new adaption that ensures increased survival. SRH
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis is an interesting topic to think about. I like that you said that in the article they explained that there were different possibilities that could have caused the bacteria to be present in the hogs. Its actually a little scary that they are not positive about how it actually got to the farm! I like the idea that is was brought from one of the workers who got it from the hospital, but its scary that the bacteria actually lived long enough to cause damage to the hogs. obviously it is feeding off of something on the farm that keeps it alive.
ReplyDelete-MM
I remember in class we saw the E.coli bacteria too and i thought it was so cool how mutations evolved, does the article say if this bacteria can affect humans? and if it did has there been any testing as to curing it?
ReplyDeleteRuth Guerra
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting how bacteria can transfer from humans to animals and then back to humans. This reminds me of the epidemic that happened a couple of years ago with the swine flu which is a respiratory disease of pigs causing influenza but can be transmitted to humans which can possibly cause pneumonia.
ReplyDeleteJH