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Bacteria Common in Foods,
but Few Drug Resistant
Excerpt
By Jacqueline Stenson, Reuter's Health
SAN DIEGO (Reuters
Health) - While many grocery
store items may harbor enterococci bacteria, the presence of these
microbes in the food supply does not pose a significant health
threat to most people, according to a researcher from the US Department
of Agriculture (USDA).
"Unless you're really, really sick, the enterococci is not going
to harm you," said Dr. Charlene Hudson, a microbiologist at the
USDA's Antimicrobial Resistance Research Unit in Athens, Georgia.
"People generally don't get sick from eating enterococci in foods."
Particularly encouraging,
she said, is that a new analysis of common food products did not
find any strains of the bacterium that are resistant to the antibiotic
of last resort in treating it--vancomycin. Vancomycin-resistant
enterococci are a growing concern in hospitals, where they can
be spread from patient to patient, possibly killing them.
"We were happy there
was no vancomycin resistance," Hudson told Reuters Health.
Enterococci are commonly
found in the gastrointestinal tracts of people and animals.
Experts have been concerned
that the use of antibiotics in animals could contribute to the
development of resistant strains of bacteria that are then passed
on to people through consumption of meat or fruits and vegetables
that are exposed to the bacteria in soil that is contaminated,
often by animal excrement. There are also worries that harmful
strains of bacteria might get into the food supply in other ways,
for example through food handlers.
In the new study, Hudson
and colleagues examined 19 different types of meats, vegetables
and fruits purchased in six grocery stores in Georgia to see if
the foods harbored enterococci, and if so, which strains.
Fifty-five percent of
the food samples, or 186 out of 337, contained enterococci, Hudson
reported Friday at a meeting of the American Society for Microbiology.
Potatoes were most likely to carry the bacteria, which were also
frequently found in chicken, beef, turkey and pork.
While most of the enterococci
strains were resistant to the antibiotics bacitracin and lincomycin,
few were resistant to newer antibiotics such as linezolid and
nitrofurantoin. None was resistant to vancomycin.
In addition, Hudson noted,
not many of the foods sampled contained other bacteria, including
Salmonella, Campylobacter or E. coli, all of which can cause serious
illness.
"This study is, to us,
good news," she said.
Reference
Source 89
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