U.S. Still Has No System to Monitor MRSA in Animal Production; Congress
Needs to Compel Government Action
WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A new study published in
the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Emerging Infectious
Diseases links a new strain of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus
(MRSA), once found only in pigs, to more than 20 percent of all human MRSA
infections in the Netherlands (the study can be found at
http://www.cdc.gov/eid/content/13/12/1834.htm).
The new strain of MRSA, NT-MRSA, emerged in the Netherlands in 2003 and
increased steadily until by 2006 it accounted for more than one out of
every five human MRSA infections, many of them in either pig farmers or
cattle farmers. The NT-MRSA cases clustered in regions of the country with
high densities of pig and cattle farms. The new strain has high rates of
hospitalization, suggesting that it causes severe disease.
Research published this fall in Veterinary Microbiology found MRSA was
also prevalent in Canadian pigs and pig farmers, pointing again to animal
agriculture as a source of the deadly bacteria.
Despite these studies and others from Europe dating back to 2005, the
United States does not systematically test pigs, cattle, and other food
animals for MRSA. As a result, the US public health establishment does not
know whether the use of antibiotics in food animals in the United States is
contributing to the reported surge of MRSA cases in the United States.
A study published earlier in the Journal of the American Medical
Association (JAMA) estimated almost 100,000 MRSA infections in the United
States in 2005, nearly 19,000 of them fatal. In comparison, HIV/AIDS killed
17,000 people that year.
Members of the Keep Antibiotics Working coalition (KAW), including
medical, agriculture, and environmental experts, are repeating their call
for Congress to compel the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to determine
whether swine, cattle and poultry harbor MRSA in the US and could be
reservoirs from which infections are making their way into the community.
"Antibiotic resistance is exploding in our hospitals and communities.
Medical experts point to the profligate use of antibiotics in animal feed
as a significant cause, but those in charge of safeguarding our food system
are mostly just whistling in the dark," said Rebecca Goldburg, Senior
Scientist at Environmental Defense.
The heavy use of antibiotics in industrialized livestock operations can
select for resistant bacteria, such as MRSA. The Union of Concerned
Scientists estimates that 70% of all the antibiotics and related drugs used
in the United States are used as feed additives for chicken, hogs, and beef
cattle. Antibiotics use in pig farms in the Netherlands is believed to be
facilitating the spread of MRSA there.
Proposed federal legislation would phase out the use of antibiotics
that are important in human medicine as animal feed additives within two
years. The Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act is
sponsored by Senate Health Committee Chairman Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and
Senators Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Susan Collins (R-ME), Sherrod Brown (D-OH)
and Jack Reed (D-RI) in the Senate (S. 549) and Rep. Louise Slaughter
(D-NY), the only microbiologist in Congress, and 34 other House members in
the U.S. House of Representatives (H.R. 962).
The American Medical Association, the Infectious Diseases Society of
America, and the American Academy of Pediatrics are among the more than 350
health, agriculture, and other groups nationwide that have endorsed this
bill.
SOURCE Keep Antibiotics Working Coalition
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Related links:
http://www.cdc.gov/eid/content/13/12/1834.htm
CONTACT:
Dan Klotz, +1-202-478-6184-w,
+1-347-307-2866-c, dklotz@mrss.com, for Keep Antibiotics Working
Coalition
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