Antimicrobial Resistant Infections in Livestock Can Affect Humans Too

The threat of antimicrobial resistance has the potential to return us to a pre-antimicrobial era in which common infections are untreatable. In fact, we are already encountering infections that resist all commercially available antibiotics. Humans did not create resistance, but the inappropriate and suboptimal use of antimicrobials in both humans and animals have certainly promoted it. Because microbes that infect animals can often infect humans as well, it is important to understand how antimicrobial resistance develops in animal populations, especially populations in close contact with people such as livestock. With technology like Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS), researchers can study the evolution and acquisition of antimicrobial resistance in specific pathogens to help inform strategies to fight emerging resistance.