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Impacts of small-scale chicken farming activity on antimicrobial-resistant Escherichia coli carriage in backyard chickens and children in rural Ecuador.
The emergence, spread, and persistence of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) remains a pressing global concern. Increased promotion of commercial small-scale agriculture within low-resource settings has facilitated an increased use in antimicrobials as growth promoters globally, creating antimicrobial-resistant animal reservoirs. We conducted a longitudinal field study in rural Ecuador to monitor the AMR of Escherichia coli populations from backyard chickens and children at three sample periods with approximately 2-month intervals (February, April, and June 2017). We assessed AMR to 12 antibiotics using generalized linear mixed effects models (GLMM). We also sampled and assessed AMR to the same 12 antibiotics in one-day-old broiler chickens purchased from local venders. One-day-old broiler chickens showed lower AMR at sample period 1 compared to sample period 2 (for 9 of the 12 antibiotics tested); increases in AMR between sample periods 2 and 3 were minimal. Two months prior to the first sample period (December 2016) there was no broiler farming activity due to a regional collapse followed by a peak in annual farming in February 2017. Between sample periods 1 and 2, we observed significant increases in AMR to 6 of the 12 antibiotics in children and to 4 of the 12 antibiotics in backyard chickens. These findings suggest that the recent increase in farming, and the observed increase of AMR in the one-day old broilers, may have caused the increase in AMR in backyard chickens and children. Small-scale farming dynamics could play an important role in the spread of AMR in low- and middle-income countries
Spatial Exposure of Agricultural Antimicrobial Resistance in Relation to Free-Ranging Domestic Chicken Movement Patterns among Agricultural Communities in Ecuador.
The use of antimicrobial growth promoters in chicken farming has been commonly associated with high levels of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in humans. Most of this work, however, has been focused on intensive large-scale operations. Intensive small-scale farming that regularly uses antibiotics is increasing worldwide and has different exposure pathways compared with large-scale farming, most notably the spatial connection between chickens and households. In these communities, free-ranging backyard chickens (not fed antibiotics) can roam freely, whereas broiler chickens (fed antibiotics) are reared in the same husbandry environment but confined to coops. We conducted an observational field study to better understand the spatial distribution of AMR in communities that conduct small-scale farming in northwestern Ecuador. We analyzed phenotypic resistance of Escherichia coli sampled from humans and backyard chickens to 12 antibiotics in relation to the distance to the nearest small-scale farming operation within their community. We did not find a statistically significant relationship between the distance of a household to small-scale farming and antibiotic-resistant E. coli isolated from chicken or human samples. To help explain this result, we monitored the movement of backyard chickens and found they were on average 17 m (min-max: 0-59 m) from their household at any given time. These backyard chickens on average ranged further than the average distance from any study household to its closest neighbor. This level of connectivity provides a viable mechanism for the spread of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria and genes throughout the community