Antibiotic resistance is on the rise! As if we didn’t
already know that. Scientists have shown though, that antibiotic resistant
bacteria are found in the gut microbiome of children as young as six months
old. This
study sampled children from 6 months of age to 19 years. From this, over
2,500 resistance genes were found to be present in the normal gut flora of
bacteria. That is a 30% increase in the number of known resistance genes. This is
a growing problem since children receive so many antibiotics in this age range,
so these healthy flora are repeatedly being exposed to these drugs. Also, the
fact that children as young as six months were found to have resistant bacteria
in their gut microbiome is pretty disturbing. Infant guts are colonized over
time from their exposure to those individuals around them and by things they
touch and ingest. If these children who are barely old enough to start eating
soft foods have resistant bacteria in their guts, that means that antibiotic
resistance is really all around us. Scary stuff, since MRSA has been found to
kill more people in the U.S. annually than HIV.
That is very ironic. To me, that makes me question why children at this age are even given antibiotics if there are so many resistant microbes in their gut. I guess the antibiotics are specific enough not to encounter those that would resist it. Interesting!
ReplyDeleteWell, I'm not sure if these children were given antibiotics themselves, or if they acquired these resistance bacteria from those around them. They are introduced to new bacteria all around them, so their older siblings could have been sick and repeatedly exposed to antibiotics, then passed on resistant bacteria to the little ones.. Idk. But antibiotics are constantly being adapted to better treat these types of bacteria. Also, combinations of different antibiotics with different mechanisms of action are often used to get past the resistance and treat the infection at the same time.
DeleteThat is a scary thought that babies that young are already having strong resistance to antibiotics.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know that more people die due to MRSA annually than HIV. Seems like the population doesn't really know much about a statistic like this.
I had no idea about the MRSA thing either! Sure we hear about it, but not in that sense.
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