PARIS - Antibiotic-resistant "superbugs" -- which the World Health Organization calls one of the top global threats to public health -- usually conjure images of hospital settings. Researchers warned Sunday of "an international public health risk" after finding antibiotic-resistant bacteria in a range of different types of raw dog food.
In the dog food study, a team from the University of Porto analyzed 55 samples of dog food from 25 brands including 14 raw frozen types, looking for Enterococci bacteria. Genetic sequencing revealed that some of these antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the raw dog food were the same kind found in hospital patients in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands.
In a separate study, which has not yet been submitted to a medical journal for publication, another team from Portugal tested pet owners and animals from 80 households for bacteria with the mcr-1 gene, which provides resistance to the last-resort antibiotic colistin.