2023-05-05 16:00:00
On 05.05.2023 at 06:00
Modified on 05.05.2023 at 6:00 p.m.
The widespread use of antibiotics in agriculture has led to the emergence of bacteria that are more resistant to the human immune system, scientists warn.
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What is the colistine ? It is an antibiotic which has been used for several decades to treat bacterial infections in animals, but also and above all to accelerate the growth of breeding chickens and pigs. This was especially the case in the 1980s, in China and in many other countries. However, we know that abusing antibiotics is never good: it leads to bioresistance over time, making bacteria tougher and immune systems less able to defend themselves. Today, this anti-microbial long injected into animals is in the sights of a study published in the very serious review eLifewhich suggests that its consumption, through the chicken and pork that ended up on supermarket shelves, might have made the human immune system less resistant.
More resistant E. coli bacteria
According to this research, colistin has led to the emergence of strains ofE. coli which are more likely to evade our immune system’s first line of defense.
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Although colistin is now banned, these results sound the alarm regarding the health threat posed by overuse of antibiotics in farms, which seems very real. However, if the European Union has banned for more than a year the preventive injection of antibiotics to animals in intensive farming, this is still the case in many countries.
“Our study highlights the danger of indiscriminate use of antimicrobials in agriculture. We accidentally ended up compromising our own immune system to get bigger chickens”explained to The Guardian Professor Craig MacLean, who led the research at Oxford University.
The results might have important implications for the development of new antibiotics in the same class as colistin, known as antimicrobial peptides (AMPs). Because the specificity of colistin, a broad-spectrum antibiotic, is its resemblance to these molecules, the PAMs, used innately by our organism during the activation of our immune system. Except that the colistin resistance gene developed by these bacteria E.colicalled mcr-1, would make them more formidable facing this “cornerstone” of our immune response.
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We accidentally ended up compromising our own immune system to get bigger chickens.
According to Professor Craig MacLean and his team, if we want to fight once morestantibiotic resistance, and to develop effective long-term antibiotics once morest bacteria which are more and more numerous to resist our natural defenses and our drugs, it may be necessary to abandon molecules analogous to AMPs. Except that many antimicrobials of this type are already in development, to fight once morest superbugs, which might cause up to 10 million deaths per year worldwide by 2050according to the UN.
Due to the massive use of antibiotics in breeding, these resistant genes might multiply and “be difficult to eradicate even if colistin is no longer used”. With the main risk which is that the new drugs that will emerge will be less effective.
It might also interest you :
⋙ “Health scandal”: a risky antibiotic would have been prescribed for no reason to six million people
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⋙ Shigella: this antibiotic-resistant bacteria that worries doctors
⋙ Antibiotics can promote the onset of Alzheimer’s disease
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