Phage spread antibiotic resistance
Friday, May 15, 2015 - 13:30
in Health & Medicine
Investigators found that nearly half of the 50 chicken meat samples purchased from supermarkets, street markets, and butchers in Austria contained viruses that are capable of transferring antibiotic resistance genes from one bacterium to another—or from one species to another. "Our work suggests that such transfer could spread antibiotic resistance in environments such as food production units and hospitals and clinics," said corresponding author Friederike Hilbert, DVM. The research is published ahead of print May 1, in Applied and Environmental Microbiology.