One of the most famous and difficult to treat in humans bacteria was found in wildlife, according to a new study in the Journal of Wildlife diseases . The researchers isolated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in both rabbits and shore birds. Wild animals may act as an environmental reservoir for the disease that humans could be infected.
S. aureus can cause skin infections or, if it enters the bloodstream, a deadly disease. Most infections are easily managed with antibiotics penicillin and related, but MRSA, the resistant variety, is rising; also known as a "superbug", it kills about 18,000 Americans a year. In most cases, people contract the bacteria from a hospital stay. Hospitals are grounds for organisms resistant to antibiotics reproduction, because patients are treated with a variety of antimicrobial drugs, prompting the pathogens to develop defenses.
It is clear for more than a decade, however, that people can catch MRSA strains outside of the hospital as well; researchers call these strains "community partners." For example, pigs in farms were found harboring the bug, probably because farmers give antibiotics to animals as they grow up, another way to encourage resistance to change. Other studies have found MRSA in pets and zoo animals; they may have been infected by human keepers.
Now it seems that even the animals in the wild may be infected with MRSA. Researchers led by epidemiologist Tara Smith of the University of Iowa College of Public Health at Iowa City took samples from 114 animals that came into the clinical care of wildlife, which rehabilitates injured and orphaned animals at Iowa State University in Ames. Seven of the animals, or 6.1%, driven S. aureus who was sensitive to methicillin; these included owls, pigeons, beaver, heron and a squirrel. Three Animals, or 2.6%, MRSA carried: two cottontail rabbits East and a little knight, a migratory shorebirds. (For comparison reasons. It is estimated that 1.5% of Americans carry MRSA in their nose)
A big question is how these species came to carry MRSA. "This is really, really difficult to understand the source, especially with something like migratory birds," said Jorge Ferreira, a veterinarian and epidemiologist working as a consultant in Switzerland, who studied the presence of MRSA in humans and their pets. We can assume that the infected animals have never received antibiotics, he notes, so they must have picked up the bugs directly from their environment.
molecular typing of the isolates showed that the shorebird conducted a hospital-acquired strain of MRSA while rabbits had community-associated strains. MRSA Bunnies was also resistant to tetracycline, which Smith said is common in farm animals.
Maybe most troubling of all was that one of the pigeons was a Staphylococcus bacteria, while remaining sensitive to methicillin, was resistant to the antibiotic vancomycin. "Vancomycin is used as a last resort in MRSA infections," says co-author Shylo Wardyn, a research assistant in the laboratory of Smith, and staphylococci strains resistant to vancomycin are rare in humans.
What wild animals are a reservoir of MRSA in the environment that is if they can spread superbugs to other animals and humans, is an open question, said Smith. infections could be "events overflow "of man, caused by hospital waste, waste water, and agriculture, which have no wider threat. It is also unclear whether animals can get rid of the infection, if they can be infected several times, or if they have already spent their infection back to man.
Ferreira's work suggests that dogs and their owners can pass MRSA back and forth, and wildlife is a well known source other human infections, such as deer and Lyme disease and mouse and hantaviruses. If such evidence is suggestive, there is much more work to do to demonstrate whether humans can be infected with MRSA wildlife.
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