Drug-resistant E. coli bacteria were escaping into his abdomen through a tear in his colon. Emergency surgery removed a 20-centimeter section.
Doctors had only one type of drug left that would kill the germs. That saved his life.
Dukes is a self-described workout fanatic who spends a couple hours a day in the gym. So how does an otherwise-healthy person get a life-threatening superbug?
“Although we’ll never know for sure exactly, it seems that the probable cause was basically from eating tainted meat,” he says.
Healthy animals vs. sick people
Animals raised for meat at large livestock operations around the world are commonly given antibiotics to prevent disease and to help them grow bigger with less feed. In the United States, more antibiotics are used for healthy animals than for sick people.
It’s a controversial practice. In a new study, U.S. Department of Agriculture researcher Thad Stanton and colleagues looked at bacteria coming out of pigs fed some of those antibiotics.
They saw “increases in about 20 different antibiotic resistance genes,” he says, including genes for resistance to one type of antibiotic that was not even fed to the pigs.
“We also saw increases in E. coli populations, which were unexpected,” he says.
Stanton notes that most E. coli are harmless, but some do cause disease. And even the harmless ones can pass resistance genes to their not-so-harmless cousins.
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25