The authors of the new work conducted a study in which they examined samples of the superbug Clostridioides difficile at 14
It turns out that antibiotic resistance may be spreading more widely than previously thought, said Semeh Bedjaoui, MDfrom the University of Copenhagen.
C.difficile is a bacterium that thrives in the human gut and is resistant to all but three modern antibiotics. Some strains contain genes that allow the production of toxins that cause severe inflammation in the gut. This leads to life-threatening diarrhea: mainly in the elderly and hospitalized patients.
C. difficile is considered one of the biggest threats to antibiotic resistance in the US - in 2017, the bacterium caused 223,900 cases and 12,800 deaths.
As a result of the work, it turned out that out of 514 pigs, 54 were found to have signs of C.Further analysis showed that C. difficile was more common in pigletsand sows than slaughter pigs.
The authors suggest that this may be due to the age difference between piglets and adult pigs - the composition of the microbiota in young pigs makes them more susceptible to C. difficile.
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