Effect of Phenolic Compounds on the Antibiotic Resistent Bacteria

Antibiotics have been used to treat and prevent disease in livestock and poultry for many years. The results of this practice include reduced mortality, increased feed efficiency and ultimately a more cost effective food supply. Unfortunately along with these benefits we run a risk of contributing to the increasingly large population of bacteria that are resistant to multiple antibiotics. The possibility that these resistant bacteria in the animal could be transferred to humans through improper food handling practices resulting in foodborne illness that would resist antibiotic treatment does exist. Current measures to address this threat are focused on the elimination of antibiotics from animal feeds in an effort to not perpetuate the current problem. Very little is being done to address the multiple-antibiotic resistant populations that have already established in the animals and their production environment. The objective of these studies is to evaluate naturally occurring phenolic compounds as feed additives to reduce the level of antibiotic resistance in the animals and ultimately in foods of animal origin. These compounds have previously demonstrated the ability to cure bacteria of plasm ids conferring antibiotic resistance in their host bacteria. The loss of the plasmid in the bacteria should contribute to a reduction in the transfer of plasmid mediated gene resistance in the population. These compounds will obviously not eliminate antibiotic resistance in the bacterial population since a great deal of resistance is actually chromosomal mediated and not plasmid mediated. However, plasm ids playa significant role in the movement of resistance genes between bacteria.