- Increasingly bacteria that cause infections becoming resistant to drugs
- Had been thought that the introduction of antibiotics started this process
- But guts of 1,000 year old mummies had bacteria resistant to antibiotics
Abigail Beall For Mailonline
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Antibiotics are used to help tackle infections in both humans and animals, but their overuse has led to growing numbers of bacteria developing resistance to the drugs.
Now it turns out antibiotic resistance is not a modern phenomenon after all and instead dates back at least 1,000 years after scientists discovered superbugs in the guts of ancient Incan mummies.
The gut bacteria inside mummies were resistant to most of today’s antibiotics, according to a team of scientists who discovered them.
Antibiotics are used to help tackle infections in both humans and animals, but their overuse has led to growing fears of bacteria becoming resistant to the drugs, causing superbugs like MRSA (shown)
It suggests that antibiotic resistance predates our own modern use of the life-saving drugs.
WHAT THE RESEARCHERS FOUND
A team from the California Polytechnic State University in San Louis studied the gut bacteria and paleofeces, human faeces, from ancient mummies.
The ancient genes were largely in microbes whose resistance is problematic today, including Enteroccocus bacteria that can infect wounds and cause urinary tract infections.
A team from the California Polytechnic State University in San Louis studied the gut bacteria and paleofeces, human faeces, from ancient mummies.
A mummy is a dead human whose skin and organs were preserved by exposure to chemicals, extreme cold, very low humidity, or lack of air.
The recovered body does not decay further if kept in cool and dry conditions.
‘The process of natural mummification is a rare and unique process from which little is known about the resulting microbial community structure,’ a similar research papers, published in PLOS One, said.
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The researchers studied the microbiome of a pre-Columbian human, from the 11th century, that was mummified naturally after he died in the Andes Mountains in Chile.
On top of this, they also looked at three Incan mummies dating back to between the 10th and 14th centuries and six mummified people from Italy, from between the 15th and 18th centuries.
It is not clear if the antibiotic resistant bacteria found in their guts played a role in their death.
‘Unexpectedly, putative antibiotic-resistance genes including…were identified,’ the researchers said.
The researchers studied the microbiome of a pre-Columbian human, from the 11th century, that was mummified naturally after he died in the Andes Mountains in Chile. Pre-Columbian Andean mummy in this study (Panel A), distended colon with paleofeces (Panel B), and one of the bacteria that was found (Panel C)
‘SWAB AND SEND’ PROJECT
Dr Adam Roberts at University College London is leading a project named ‘Swab and Send’, which encourages people to take samples from around their homes and send them to the lab.
The project is still calling for people to get involved, by swabbing strange places in their homes and posting them to the UCL lab.
‘Swabs could be taken from anywhere you find interesting; from drains, sinks, floors, houseplants, compost heaps, the bottom of your shoe, the back of your fridge or puddles,’ Dr Roberts said.
‘Anywhere that you think different bacteria will be competing for space and food is suitable. We want you to swab the weird and wonderful places your imagination can come up with.’
In the mummies they found an array of genes that would allow the bacteria to resist almost all modern antibiotics.
‘At first we were very surprised,’ Dr Tasha Santiago-Rodriguez of California Polytechnic State University in San Louis Opisbo, told the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology last month, reported New Scientist.
A team member, Professor Raul Cano, told New Scientist the research shows it is ridiculous to think the evolution of antibiotic resistance began when penicillin was discovered, by Alexander Fleming in 1928.
‘The presence of putative antibiotic-resistance genes suggests that resistance may not necessarily be associated with a selective pressure of antibiotics or contact with European cultures,’ the authors wrote.
The resistant genes existed long before antibiotics became common. But overuse of these drugs in both people and livestock has still caused superbug resistance to explode worldwide, Professor Cano said.
Antibiotic resistance is already a problem, causing difficulties in GP surgeries and hospitals in the UK.
Antibiotics are supposed to make people healthier by treating infections in humans and animals. But the use of antibiotics can have negative environmental impacts, like the well-known problem of the evolution of bacteria that is resistant to their effects.
THE PROBLEM OF ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE
Antibiotics are one of the most important drugs in the medical armoury, used to treat everything from minor bacterial infections such as conjunctivitis to life-threatening illnesses including pneumonia, meningitis and septicaemia.
But increasingly bacteria that cause these infections are becoming resistant to the drugs.
This is for a number of reasons, including the use of broad spectrum antibiotics (those that are used to treat a wide range of bacteria) when a narrower spectrum one (effective only against specific infections or families of bacteria) might have been enough, and because many patients fail to finish their prescribed course.
It is getting so bad that antibiotic-resistant bacteria could kill more people than cancer within decades.
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