Nkuchia M M’ikanatha
Chris A Whitehouse
Heather Tate
Andrea Ottensen
Jeffrey M. Lorch
David S. Blehert
Brenda M. Berlowski-Zier
Edward G. Dudley
Yezhi Fu
2022
<p><span>Wild birds are common reservoirs of </span><i>Salmonella enterica</i><span>. Wild birds carrying resistant </span><i>S</i><span>. </span><i>enterica</i><span> may pose a risk to public health as they can spread the resistant bacteria across large spatial scales within a short time. Here, we whole-genome sequenced 375 </span><i>S</i><span>. </span><i>enterica</i><span> strains from wild birds collected in 41 U.S. states during 1978–2019 to examine bacterial resistance to antibiotics and heavy metals. We found that Typhimurium was the dominant </span><i>S</i><span>. </span><i>enterica</i><span> serovar, accounting for 68.3% (256/375) of the bird isolates. Furthermore, the proportions of the isolates identified as multi-antimicrobial resistant (multi-AMR: resistant to at least three antimicrobial classes) or multi-heavy metal resistant (multi-HMR: resistant to at least three heavy metals) were both 1.87% (7/375). Interestingly, all the multi-resistant </span><i>S</i><span>. </span><i>enterica</i><span> (</span><i>n</i><span> = 12) were isolated from water birds or raptors; none of them was isolated from songbirds. Plasmid profiling demonstrated that 75% (9/12) of the multi-resistant strains carried resistance plasmids. Our study indicates that wild birds do not serve as important reservoirs of multi-resistant </span><i>S</i><span>. </span><i>enterica</i><span> strains. Nonetheless, continuous surveillance for bacterial resistance in wild birds is necessary because the multi-resistant isolates identified in this study also showed close genetic relatedness with those from humans and domestic animals.</span></p>
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10.1111/1462-2920.15865
en
Society for Applied Microbiology
Low occurrence of multi-antimicrobial and heavy metal resistance in Salmonella enterica from wild birds in the United States
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