Antibiotic-resistant superbugs survived for a long time on hedgehogs

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Hedgehogs aren't dangerous, according to the study.

Researchers have discovered that an evolutionary conflict between fungi and bacteria on hedgehog skin led to antibiotic-resistant bacteria that was previously assumed to be the result of human use of antibiotics.

A parasitic fungus found on the skin of European hedgehogs has been linked to some lineages of MRSA or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (Erinaceus europaeus). According to a new study, fungi exude antibiotics to battle and destroy Staphylococcus aureus bacteria (also found in hedgehogs). The bacterium, in turn, evolved antibiotic resistance that later spread to cattle and people.

Even though antibiotics are typically to blame for the rise of superbugs, this research indicates that certain antibiotic-resistant bacteria had their ancestors in the natural world. Antibiotic resistance genes entered pathogen genomes before humans used antibiotics. Still, this process illustrates how that might have happened, according to study co-author Ewan Harrison, a researcher at the University of Cambridge and Wellcome Sanger Institute in the U.K.

MRSA is a staph bacteria resistant to antibiotics, making it more difficult to treat if it infects humans or cattle. According to a press release from the University of Cambridge, the researchers looked at mecC-MRSA, a variant of the superbug responsible for about 1 in 200 human MRSA infections.

Initially, the mecC-MRSA was assumed to have developed in cows fed a high dosage of antibiotics. According to a prior study, European hedgehogs carry it in up to 60% of cases. The antibiotic penicillin is produced naturally by the Trichophyton erinacei fungus of hedgehogs.

As part of an international collaboration, Harrison discovered the genes that produce penicillin, the antibiotic that kills staph germs, in a parasitic fungus on hedgehogs. As a next step, they sequenced and dated these penicillin-resistant genes by counting backward to measure how many changes in the genome occur at a set rate per year. Before penicillin was widely used in medicine in the 1940s, scientists discovered in the 1800s that bacteria were resistant to a penicillin derivative called methicillin.

MecC-MRSA may have originated in hedgehogs, but researchers aren't sure how it made its way into humans. Animals like hedgehogs and other wildlife have a lot more contact with soil daily than most humans do, and we know that these resistance genes are present in the soil and soil bacteria," Harrison added.

According to the authors, humans could have contracted the superbug after contacting infected hedgehogs. Despite this, Harrison underlined that people shouldn't be afraid of hedgehogs. Hedgehogs are not a threat to Harrison, he said. "I believe that needs to be made clear." These animals, or another undiscovered animal, may have served as intermediaries because of the presence of the mecC-MRSA in livestock.

Harrison says, "It just indicates evolutionary processes in nature may select for antibiotic resistance, and that can be found in a human infection." Antibiotic use may have been selected for resistance in other MRSA strains that date back to the invention of penicillin, as evidenced by the researchers' findings.

No one in the study's research team, but Southampton University's William Keevil, a professor of environmental health care, welcomed the new findings. Keevil tells Live Science in an email that he believes the discovery is important and another example of environmental bacteria's evolutionary battle and adaptation to survive in the presence of antibiotic-producing fungi, which has been occurring for 100 million years before humans and the antibiotic era.

Reference : https://www.livescience.com/mrsa-superbug-on-hedgehogs

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