Antibiotic resistance is serious public health concern and we may be entering an era where there are no useful antibiotics left to treat infection. Antibiotics are used widely in human medicine, veterinary medicine, and in agriculture and not always correctly. This had led to the emergence and spread of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Increased use of antibiotics is influenced by an increasing population, an aging population, longer survival of people with complex illness, changes in food production systems and by other social and economic factors. Some of the antibiotics used find their way into water sources. It is not clear what role food and the environment plays in human infection with antibiotic resistant bacteria and this project aims to address this. The Antimicrobial Resistance and Microbial Ecology (ARME) group at NUI Galway have a large collection of antibiotic resistant E. coli isolated from retail food samples collected throughout the island of Ireland in 2014, as well as collections of E. coli isolated from waters and human clinical specimens. This provides a unique opportunity to compare isolates of E. coli isolated from different sectors to determine what contribution food and the environment may make to human infection/colonisation. This research will examine which antibiotics E. coli isolated from food and the environment are resistant to, and compare results with those isolated from clinical specimens. Where isolates of similar resistance profiles are identified, molecular biology approaches will be applied to determine relatedness of strains.
