Resistant Gens in Food

Recent Studies presented in the 107th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology, indicates that we humans may be eating food that is causing a rise in antibiotic resistant infections.

Dr. Hua Wang (Ohio State university) who presented the study said that the food we eat could be an important source of this antibiotic resistant evolution in microbes. Over the past few years, normal infection like malaria, flu and many more are becoming more and more dangerous as the microbes have been developing antibiotic resistance. This makes it harder to treat the patient as the regular antibiotics are to able to fight the disease causing microbes. Earlier on this rise in resistance was attributed to the fact that doctors and physicians were more easily prescribing powerful antibiotic to patients thus flooding the general population with these drugs. Thus it allowed the very few number of resistant varieties of microbes to grow in number and now cause the problem we face.

Studies now show that food intake may also be a key factor that has led to rise in these resistant varieties. The way microbes may gain antibiotic resistance is through a process called Horizontal Gene Transfer." this is a process by which bacteria in close proximity to each other can share genetic information thus making non resistant varieties, resistant. This problem is not being studied further in greater detail as it may present a huge problem for Modern Medicine.

Another scary fact is that is has also been shown that babies who have been feed only on breast milk also show the presence of these resistant varieties of microbes in their intestines. This, means that he source of these microbes can also be outside the food supply. Thus now environmental factors are also being studies as a vector form to transfer genetic information from resistant varieties to non-resistant varieties.

Dr. Hua is currently working on methods by which resistant genes can be minimized in our foods. So next time you buy something from the supermarket make sure you cook it nicely and you know exactly what is the source of your food products.