Antibiotic-resistant bacteria most often are associated with hospitals and other health-care settings, but a new study indicates that chicken coops and sewage treatment plants also are hot spots of antibiotic resistance.
The research, led by a team at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, is published May 12 in Nature.
“Not only do the communities in our study serve as models for how most people live, they also represent areas of highest antibiotic use,” Dantas said.
The scientists surveyed bacteria and their capacity to resist antibiotics in a rural village in El Salvador and a densely populated slum on the outskirts of Lima, Peru. In both communities, the researchers identified areas ripe for bacteria to shuffle and share their resistance genes. These hot spots of potential resistance transmission included chicken coops in the rural village and a modern wastewater treatment plant outside Lima.
Read the full story by Washington University School of Medicine: Chicken coops, sewage treatment plants are hot spots of antibiotic resistance