UA Studies Pathogens That Resist Antibiotics

Scientists who look for ways to eliminate foodborne pathogens are up against another obstacle: pathogens that resist antibiotics. In particular, they want to single out the resistant bacteria for special attention and get rid of them.

That’s the focus occupying Ramakrishna Nannapaneni, a Food Safety Consortium researcher in the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture food science department working with Michael Johnson. His team is trying to quantify Campylobacter, a pathogen that contaminates nearly all retail raw broiler chicken carcasses, and its emerging ability to resist an important fluoroquinolone antibiotic known as ciprofloxacin.

According to a press release from the FSC, surveys have shown that broilers frequently carry large numbers of Campylobacter in their intestinal contents that spread during further processing onto raw retail products. Campylobacter also can occur in raw milk and water and on raw fruits and vegetables. Proper cooking recommended by the U.S. Department of Agriculture will completely kill Campylobacter present on raw poultry.

The problem is that people who handle raw poultry contaminated by Campylobacter then handle other foods that aren’t cooked before consumption such as salads and lightly cooked vegetables. To aid in such risk assessment, scientists are finding better ways to understand the numbers and virulence properties of Campylobacter.

To better understand ciprofloxacin antibiotic-resistant Campylobacter, “current methods need to be refined for isolating and quantifying the complete diversity of such strains commonly occurring in raw poultry,” Nannapaneni said.

While fluoroquinolone antibiotic-resistant Campylobacter was found to be stable and persistent, there is some good news in the situation. A 30-month study in the Arkansas research showed that chickens often had at least minimally detectable levels of Campylobacter, but only a small percentage of carcasses contained high levels of the pathogen. The good news is that of those chickens with the high levels of Campylobacter, the number of them declined over the 30 months.