Antibiotic Use Linked to Resistant E. coli in Kids

DEERFIELD, Ill.Direct and indirect exposure of young children to antibiotics through medical and agricultural usage can increase their risk for carriage of resistant E. coli, according to a new study published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

The study, conducted by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, revealed several factors affecting antibiotic-resistant E. coli carriage in young children in Peru. By analyzing E. coli samples from more than 500 children, the researchers were able to identify individual, household and community factors influencing carriage of the resistant bacteria.

"In analyzing the study results, we learned that children's use of antibiotics, as well as their family members' use, increased their risk for carrying resistant E. coli, and that residing in an area where a greater proportion of households served home-raised chickens protected against resistance. This protective effect can be understood in light of the fact that the home-raised chickens carried significantly lower levels of resistant E. coli than did the market chickens, which in Peru are intensively raised with antibiotics. The strength of this community level variable suggests that this is where the transmission of resistance resulting from agricultural antibiotics use was taking place," said lead study investigator Dr. Henry D. Kalter, associate, Department of International Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health."

In poor communities in developing countries, with inadequate protection of excreta and water, contamination of the environment with antibiotic-resistant bacteria appeared to play at least as great a role in children's carriage of resistant E. coli as did the children's own antibiotics use.

"This study is important in a number of respects," said Edward T. Ryan, MD, president of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH). "It improves our understanding of the growing global public health threat of antibiotic resistant organisms, and underscores the critical role that antibiotic use in animals plays in contributing to this threat. The vast majority of the tons and tons of antibiotics ingested each year on this planet are administered to livestock and animals. This study clearly shows that such use comes with a very real cost to human health."