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| Medical illustration of non-typhoidal Salmonella--Courtesy of CDC |
The annual report on the status of drug resistance in bacterial foodborne causes that is compiled by a troika of U.S. federal agencies said there are signs of improvement though there remains concerns about multidrug resistance to two types of salmonella.
The findings are part of the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System (NARMS), which is a collaborative effort to track resistant bacteria in humans, food animals and retail meat by the CDC, FDA and USDA.
The annual NARMS report focuses on foodborne pathogens that resist antibiotics considered crucial to human medicine and on multidrug-resistant bacteria, or those that resist agents in three or more antibiotic classes.
Overall, this year's study found salmonella isolates remain effective against resistance, CIDRAP News reported. About 80% of human salmonella isolates aren't resistant to any tested antibiotics, which is a number that hasn't changed in the past decade. Resistance to the three main drugs used to treat human salmonella isolates--ceftriaxone, azithromycin, and quinolones--remains below 3%.
Salmonella multidrug resistance in human, beef and chicken isolates also hasn't changed in the past decade, holding at about 10%. The number of multidrug-drug resistant salmonella isolates in retail chickens decreased about 3%.
However, what remains concerning in the report is the continued rise in multidrug resistance in human isolates of the common salmonella serotype that has doubled from 18% in 2011 to 46% in 2013. Additionally, the report says there is an increase in multidrug resistance and ceftriaxone resistance in salmonella Dublin subtypes from cattle to humans.
- read the CIDRAP News take
- see the FDA press release