Migratory Birds Take Drug Resistant E. coli Global

Migratory birds infected with antibiotic-resistant E. coli have been found as far away as the polar ice cap, Newsday recently reported.
Sweden scientists reporting in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases traveled to vast regions of the frigid polar ice cap in search of species they hoped had been spared exposure to drug-resistant strains. They were surprised when they discovered widespread antibiotic-resistant E.coli in Arctic-dwelling birds never exposed to the drugs.

Maria Sjolund of Central Hospital in Vaxjo, Sweden, went on a series of Arctic expeditions, collecting mostly fecal samples from 97 birds in three geographic regions: northeastern Siberia; Point Barrow, Alaska; and northern Greenland. Although the locations are thousands of miles apart, they are intimately linked through looping migratory flyways.

“We live in a world of migration of all sorts of animals, birds and humans,” Steigbigel told Newsday. “We had an example recently of multi-drug-resistant TB. I see all of it as a continuum: as birds migrating on wings to humans migrating in airplanes.”

Migratory birds are exposed through numerous sources, including food and water, in parts of the world where the drugs are rampantly misused by people.