Farmers in Quebec voluntarily stopped using cephalosporins (…
Farmers in Quebec voluntarily stopped using cephalosporins (medically important antibiotics) in poultry production early in 2005. Over the next two years, E. coli (green squares) and Salmonella (blue diamonds) were isolated from retail chicken and tested for cephalosporin (ceftiofur) resistance. Levels of cephalosporin use in human medicine (gray bars) as well as cephalosporin resistance in human isolates (red X’s) was measured over the same period of time. What can you conclude from these data? Image description: x-axis is years divided in quarters. y-axis is the amount of cephalosporin use. Grey bars are human use of cephalosporins. The blue line with diamonds is the level of cephalosporin (ceftiofur) resistant Salmonella isolates found in chickens. The red line with X’s is the level of cephalosporin (ceftiofur) resistant Salmonella isolates found in humans. The green line with squares is the level of cephalosporin (ceftiofur) resistant E. coli isolates found in chickens. Quebec stopped using cephalosporin drugs (including ceftiofur) in chickens in 2005. After 2005 the level of resistant isolates decreased in both chickens and humans, but the usage of cephalosporins in humans didn’t significantly change.