Dangerous superbugs can spread from pigs to humans, study reveals

Scientists call the discovery ‘alarming’, Zoe Tidman reports

Researchers in Denmark looked for the presence of a superbug bacterium in pigs (Getty Images)

Deadly superbugs may be able to jump from pigs to humans, according to new research.

Scientists in Denmark have found links between drug-resistant infections in hospital patients and bacterium in the farm animals.

The researchers looked at Clostridium difficile, a superbug which is resistent to the vast majority of antibiotics.

They found samples of this bacterium with the same antibiotic-resistent genes in both the pigs and patients.

This suggests animal to human transmission is possible, according to the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases.

“Our finding of multiple and shared resistance genes indicate that C. difficile is a reservoir of antimicrobial resistance genes that can be exchanged between animals and humans”, Dr Semeh Bejaoui, who was involved in the study, said.

“This alarming discovery suggests that resistance to antibiotics can spread more widely than previously thought, and confirms links in the resistance chain leading from farm animals to humans.”

The researchers - from the University of Copenhagen and Statens Serum Institut - scanned pig stool from animals from 14 farms for strains of C. difficile.

They used genome sequencing to compare the bacterium in the animals to that found in stool of hospital patients with the infection.

Thirteen sequence types were found in both animals and humans.

They also used sequencing to detect antibiotic-resistent genes, and found 38 bacterium isolates from animals that contained at least one.

“This study provides more evidence on the evolutionary pressure connected with the use of antimicrobials in animal husbandry, which selects for dangerously resistant human pathogens,” Dr Bejaoui said.

“This highlights the importance of adopting a more comprehensive approach, for the management of C. difficile infection, in order to consider all possible routes of dissemination,”