Preventive antibiotic treatment of calves: emergence of dysbiosis causing propagation of obese state-associated and mobile multidrug resistance-carrying bacteria

Dorota A Dobrzanska, Matthew T F Lamaudière, Jessica Rollason, Lauren Acton, Michael Duncan, Sharon Compton, John Simms, Gareth D Weedall, Igor Y Morozov

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

20 Citations (Scopus)
90 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

In agriculture, antibiotics are used for treatment and prevention of livestock disease. Antibiotics perturb the bacterial gut composition but the extent of these changes and potential consequences for animal and human health are still debated. Six calves were housed in a controlled environment. Three animals received an injection of the antibiotic florfenicol (Nuflor) and three received no treatment. Faecal samples were collected at 0, 3, and 7 days, bacterial communities profiled to assess the impact of a therapy on the gut microbiota. Phylogenetic analysis (16S-rDNA) established that at day 7, antibiotic treated microbiota showed a 10-fold increase in facultative anaerobic Escherichia spp, a signature of imbalanced microbiota, dysbiosis. The antibiotic resistome showed a high background of antibiotic resistance genes, which did not significantly change in response to florfenicol. However, the maintenance of Escherichia coli plasmid-encoded quinolone, oqxB and propagation of mcr-2, colistin resistance genes was observed and confirmed by Sanger sequencing. The microbiota of treated animals was enriched with energy harvesting bacteria, common to obese microbial communities. We propose that antibiotic treatment of healthy animals leads to unbalanced, disease- and obese related microbiota that promotes growth of E. coli carrying resistance genes on mobile elements, potentially increasing the risk of transmission of antibiotic resistant bacteria to humans.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)669-682
Number of pages14
JournalMicrobial Biotechnology
Volume13
Issue number3
Early online date30 Oct 2019
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 May 2020

Bibliographical note

©This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Funder

NERC

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Biotechnology
  • Bioengineering
  • Biochemistry
  • Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology

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