Antibiotic resistance. How wild are wild mammals?

Abstract

In bacteria associated with humans, antimicrobial resistance is common, both in clinical isolates and in the less-studied commensal flora, and it is thought that commensal and environmental bacteria might be a hidden reservoir of resistance. Gilliver et al. have reported that resistance is also prevalent in faecal bacteria from wild rodents living in northwest England. Here we test the faeces of moose, deer and vole in Finland and find an almost complete absence of resistance in enterobacteria. Resistance is thus not a universal property of enterobacterial populations, but may be a result of the human use of antibiotics.