Antimicrobial-resistant organism carriage and metagenomic characterization of the microbiome and resistome in veterinary workers

Description

Laurel Redding and co-authors checked how many veterinary workers carry drug-resistant bacteria, and what lives in their microbiomes, in a 2026 study. Vet staff work amid heavy antimicrobial use and resistant pathogens, but their carriage was little measured. Personnel at a large academic veterinary hospital and private small-animal practices gave nasal swabs, stool samples, and exposure surveys; the hospital environment was sampled too.

At the academic hospital, about eighteen percent carried MRSA in the nose and eleven percent carried resistant Escherichia coli in stool. Private-practice rates were twelve and a half and twenty-five percent, on a small sample. Within the hospital, giving antibiotics to patients was the exposure linked to MRSA carriage. Microbial makeup differed a little between workplaces. The authors present it as a first full map of occupational carriage and gut and nose ecology in veterinary staff, with resistance-gene sequencing alongside cultures.

Catalog record

Source: https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC13582057