Agricultural Antibiotics and Human Health

Abstract

Summary Points • The emergence and spread of ARB is complex and intrinsically diffi cult to study; mathematical models can help with understanding underlying mechanisms and guiding policy responses. • Agricultural antibiotic use may generate novel types of ARB that spread to the human population; models can help estimate how much additional disease has been caused by agricultural antibiotic use. • Transmission of ARB from animal to human populations is particularly diffi cult to measure, as it is the product of a very high exposure rate to potentially contaminated food, and a very low probability of transmission at any given meal. • Depending on the assumptions used, the model suggests that transmission from agriculture can have a greater impact on human populations than hospital transmission. • A comparison of patterns of colonization of VRE in Europe and the United States, which had different patterns of agricultural and hospital antibiotic use, suggests that agricultural antibiotic use can have important quantitative effects on the spread of resistance