This is the result of a study published on Wednesday in the specialist magazine “Nature”, in which the veterinary bacteriologist Vincent Perreten from the University of Bern was also involved. Accordingly, in the pre-antibiotic era, in the early 19th century, hedgehogs developed resistance to the antibiotic methicillin, which is based on the gene called mecC.
The discovery shows that the widespread antibiotic resistance is by no means just a modern phenomenon that can be attributed exclusively to the clinical use of antibiotics in human and veterinary medicine, write the scientists led by first author Jesper Larsen from the Danish Statens Serum Institute.
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA for short, are among the most common antibiotic-resistant bacterial pathogens. The World Health Organization (WHO) regards resistance to these germs as a major threat to human health. Hospitals in particular fear the outbreak of such multi-resistant staphylococci because common antibiotics cannot do anything against them.
The international research team analyzed over a thousand MRSA samples from hedgehogs, humans and various farm and wild animals. So far, dairy cows have been considered the most likely reservoir for MRSA of the mecC type, where this was also detected for the first time.
However, the present study suggests that most of the mecC-MRSA strains are from hedgehogs. Dairy cows and other domesticated animals likely acted as intermediate hosts in the zoonotic transmission of resistance from hedgehogs to humans, according to the researchers.
They suspect that the antibiotic resistance developed in hedgehogs because both Staphylococcus aureus and the fungus called Trichophyton erinacei live on their skin. This fungus secretes antibiotics, and the bacteria develop resistance to this threat as a defense.
According to the researchers, the study underlines the importance of the one health approach for dealing with antibiotic resistance, according to which human and veterinary medicine must work closely together.
“There is a very large reservoir in the animal world in which antibiotic-resistant bacteria can survive – and from there it is only a small step until they are ingested by farm animals and then infect humans,” said one of the lead authors, Mark Holmes of from the University of Cambridge, according to a communication from his university.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04265-w