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Drug-resistant E. coli found in Arctic birds
BY DELTHIA RICKS | delthia.ricks@newsday.com
8:59 PM EST, January 2, 2008
Resistance to antibiotics is so pervasive that scientists now report having found evidence of drug-repelling E.coli in
Arctic birds, the bacteria having been passed by migratory fowl that circumnavigate the globe along centuries-old
flyways.
Reporting in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, scientists in Sweden traveled to vast regions of the frigid
polar ice cap in search of species they hoped had been spared exposure to drug-resistant strains. They were
surprised when they discovered widespread antibiotic-resistant E.coli in Arctic-dwelling birds never exposed to the
drugs.
Maria Sjolund of Central Hospital in Vaxjo, Sweden, went on a series of Arctic expeditions, collecting mostly fecal
samples from 97 birds in three geographic regions: northeastern Siberia; Point Barrow, Alaska; and northern
Greenland. Although the locations are thousands of miles apart, they are intimately linked through looping
migratory flyways.
Sjolund suggested her finding adds credence to the notion that antibiotic resistance is global -- and that virtually no
region of the world is unscathed. Moreover, she and her team noted that while most of the emphasis on drug
resistance in recent decades has focused on antibiotic misuse by humans, there now is evidence for the epidemic
spread of drug-resistant strains by other species.
Dr. Roy Steigbigel, a professor of medicine and microbiology at Stony Brook University Medical Center, said
migratory birds expose Arctic flocks to drug-resistant E.coli through excrement.
"The prevalence is somewhat surprising, but the fact that it has occurred is not," added Steigbigel, who pointed to
travel as a primary method through which a wide range of infectious organisms are spread. He said bird flu, which
has reached epidemic proportions in flocks worldwide, reaches diverse parts of the world via the same freeways in
the sky.
"We live in a world of migration of all sorts of animals, birds and humans," Steigbigel said. "We had an example
recently of multi-drug-resistant TB. I see all of it as a continuum: as birds migrating on wings to humans migrating in
airplanes."
Dr. Stuart B. Levy, president of the Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics, said there is no way of stopping
migrating flocks. "Birds feeding on feces will carry it and deliver it elsewhere." Birds also become exposed through
stepping in infected feces.
Migratory birds are exposed through numerous sources, including food and water, in parts of the world where the
drugs are rampantly misused by people.
Levy, whose center is at Tufts University in Boston, helps consumers understand the dangers of drug-resistance --
such as fewer drugs remaining available to treat serious infections -- and emphasized that resistance is widespread
throughout the environment. Even waterways have not been spared, he said. Sewage and agricultural runoff have
served as sources of exposure for fish.
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