Wednesday 11 December 2013

Birds carry resistant bacteria


Researchers from Tufts University in Massachusetts, Binghamton University in New York, the University of California, Davis, and the University of Veterinary and Pharmaceutical Sciences Brno in the Czech Republic have found vancomycin-resistant Enterococci (VRE) in fecal samples from American crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos), which live in close proximity to humans in urban areas.

The research team collected 590 samples crow feces from four different locations in the United States—in California, Kansas, New York, and Massachusetts. They found that Enterococci in 2.5 percent of the samples carried vanA, one of nine vancomycin-resistance genes. In addition to being resistant to vancomycin, bacterial strains that the research team isolated were also resistant to other antibiotics, including erythromycin, ampicillin, and ciprofloxacin.

The findings have been published online in Environmental Microbiology.
Posted by Tim Sandle

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