Three of the main food safety and health bodies representing the European Union have issued a second report detailing the latest data on antibiotic use and resistance to them. The agencies, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), the European Medicines Agency (EMA), and the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) have examined the pitfalls of using particular antimicrobials in animals and humans and how it is generally leading to microbes resisting their application. The implications are an inability to treat certain diseases.

Vytenis Andriukaitis, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, stated:

“To contain antibiotic resistance we need to fight on three fronts at the same time: human, animal and the environment. This is exactly what we are trying to achieve in the EU and globally with our recently launched EU Action Plan on antimicrobial resistance.

This new report confirms the link between antibiotic consumption and antibiotic resistance in both humans and food-producing animals.”

The Joint Interagency Antimicrobial Consumption and Resistance Analysis (JIACRA) report emphasises some key differences between countries in the EU on using antibiotics in veterinary practice and human medicine. Reducing the use of antibiotics on all fronts especially where they are simply unnecessary should keep the rate of development of resistance to a minimum.

A number of specific types of antibiotic have been examined. The class of antibiotics called polymyxins that includes colistin is used widely in the veterinary sector. It is also increasingly used in hospitals to treat multidrug-resistant infections.

Antibiotics are more commonly applied with humans than in animals. These include third- and fourth-generation cephalosporins and quinolones. These antibiotics are considered critically important for human health. The quinolones are extensively used to treat salmonellosis and campylobacteriosis in humans. The microorganisms causing these two diseases are slowly developing resistance to these drugs as are E.coli and some enteric bacteria towards the new-generation cephalosporins. Resistance by E.coli is particularly problematic.

The second report builds on the first but now includes a lot more data and a better, more sophisticated interpretation of the evidence.

Reference

ECDC/EFSA/EMA second joint report on the integrated analysis of the consumption of antimicrobial agents and occurrence of antimicrobial resistance in bacteria from humans and food-producing animals.