HIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In what could be described as a major potential health hazard, the bacteria in the Pampa river is becoming resistant to almost all the antibiotics that are used commonly, a study report by a team of scientists in the Kerala University found. Pampa being the major halting point for the Sabarimala pilgrims, the fact that the river is infested with E.coli has been reported earlier by a number of studies including that of the State Pollution Control Board. However, it is for the first time that a scientific study is pointing out the dangers of this E.coli becoming resistant to many antibiotics.
A Gangaprasad of the KU Department of Botany and Jayachandran V P of Sree Narayana Guru Institute of Science and Technology, who conducted the study over a two-year period, have found that this resistance to antibiotics can be transferred to other microbes and a host of other animals and fish and probably back to humans through the food chain.
``Devotees come from various states and many of them could be on antibiotics for various diseases or as part of self-medication. When the faecal contamination happens, all this goes into the flowing water and this would facilitate the drug-resistant E.coli to move into other environments such as that of Vembanad Lake and Kuttanad,’’ said Jayachandran, who had analysed multiple water samples from six different collection points at Pampa.
The study team has found that while the E.coli in Pampa is showing almost complete resistance to penicillin, over 60 percent of them showed resistance to the broad spectrum antibiotic, tetracycline. ``If E.coli can develop such strong resistance to this drug, it is only a matter of time before other bacteria become resistant as well, as E.coli has the capability to transfer resistance traits,’’ said Gangaprasad. The antibiotic resistance gets transferred from one bacterium to another by genetic recombination among bacteria.
The E.coli also showed almost fifty percent resistance to ciprofloxacin, amoxicillin and ampicillin. But what is most worrying is that as much as 94 percent of the bacteria showed resistance to multiple antibiotics. Even worse, 45 percent of the bacteria showed resistance to five antibiotics.
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