From BOSTON CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL and the “UHI, what’s that?” department
Scientists find link between increases in local temperature and antibiotic resistance
Boston, MA (May 21, 2018) – Bacteria have long been thought to develop antibiotic resistance largely due to repeated exposure through over-prescribing. But could much bigger environmental pressures be at play?
Seeking to better understand the distribution of antibiotic resistance across the U.S., a multidisciplinary team of epidemiologists from Boston Children’s Hospital and the University of Toronto have found that higher local temperatures and population densities correlate with a higher degree of antibiotic resistance in common bacterial strains. The findings were published today in Nature Climate Change.
“The effects of climate are increasingly being recognized in a variety of infectious diseases, but so far as we know this is the first time it has been implicated in the distribution of antibiotic resistance over geographies,” says the study’s lead author, Derek MacFadden, MD, an infectious disease specialist and research fellow at Boston Children’s Hospital. “We also found a signal that the associations between antibiotic resistance and temperature could be increasing over time.”
“Estimates outside of our study have already told us that there will already be a drastic and deadly rise in antibiotic resistance in coming years,” says the paper’s co-senior author John Brownstein, PhD, who is Chief Innovation Officer and director of the Computational Epidemiology Group at Boston Children’s and professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School (HMS). “But with our findings that climate change could be compounding and accelerating an increase in antibiotic resistance, the future prospects could be significantly worse than previously thought.”
During their study, the team assembled a large database of U.S. antibiotic resistance information related to E. coli, K. pneumoniae, and S. aureus, pulling from various streams of hospital, laboratory and disease surveillance data documented between 2013 and 2015. Altogether, their database comprised more than 1.6 million bacterial pathogens from 602 unique records across 223 facilities and 41 states.
Not surprisingly, when looking at antibiotic prescription rates across geographic areas, the team found that increased prescribing was associated with increased antibiotic resistance across all the pathogens that they investigated.
Then, comparing the database to latitude coordinates as well as mean and medium local temperatures, the team found that higher local average minimum temperatures correlated the strongest with antibiotic resistance. Local average minimum temperature increases of 10 degrees Celsius were found to be associated with 4.2, 2.2 and 3.6 percent increases in antibiotic resistant strains of E. coli, K. pneumoniae, and S. aureus, respectively.
More unsettling still, when looking at population density, the team found that an increase of 10,000 people per square mile was associated with three and six percent respective increases in antibiotic resistance in E. coli and K. pneumoniae, which are both Gram-negative species. In contrast, the antibiotic resistance of Gram-positive S. aureus did not appear to be significantly affected by population density.
“Population growth and increases in temperature and antibiotic resistance are three phenomena that we know are currently happening on our planet,” says the study’s co-senior author Mauricio Santillana, PhD, who is a faculty member in the Computational Health Informatics Program at Boston Children’s and an assistant professor at HMS. “But until now, hypotheses about how these phenomena relate to each other have been sparse. We need to continue bringing multidisciplinary teams together to study antibiotic resistance in comparison to the backdrop of population and environmental changes.”
MacFadden says the transmission factor is of particular interest for further scientific research.
A representation of antibiotic resistance caused by climate change. CREDIT Fawn Gracey/Boston Children’s Hospital
###
In addition to MacFadden, Brownstein and Santillana, additional authors on the study are Sarah McGough and David Fisman.
This work was supported by a Canadian Institute for Health Research Fellowship, the Clinician Scientist Program at University of Toronto’s Department of Medicine and the National Library of Medicine (NIH R01 LM011965).
No mention of UHI.
There’s no link to the paper in the press release, but really, all the information you need to know is in that super-sciency graphic provided in the PR, caption theirs.
I rather think the title if the research paper should be, “Extreme temperature differences have little effect on number of drug-resistant bacterial strains.” After ignoring all sorts of confounding issues, they only managed to tease out a 4.2% increase?
What bothers me is, that despite giving a lot of pertinent numbers here, I did not see the actual numbers producing their results. How many different drug-resistant strains were actually found in each locale? Perhaps the info was provided in the actual paper (surely, it must have been). Too many times I have seen significant-seeming percentages disappear into insignificance when given the actual raw numbers. How many of the pathogens in all those records were drug-resistance strains of the three bacteria studied?
More junk science trying to get more grant money!
The normal human body core temperature is 37 Celsius (98.4 Fahrenheit), but can normally vary a degree above or below that without any apparent illness. As has been rightly said, by several people, a mammal responds to bacterial and viral infection by increasing the body temperature, which tends to kill these organisms. Prior to antibiotics, patients with life-threatening infections reached a point called a “Crisis”, this was the kill or cure mechanism, where either the infectious agent or the patient died as a result of a fever.
First of all everyone is in agreement that that global warming has stalled for the last 20 years (apart from the blip caused by the last El Nino, which was widely predicted), So how has antibiotic resistance increased due to global warming? Secondly, core body temperatures are much higher than the maximum summer temperatures of most of our planets regions. Antibiotic resistance can only be measured in humans (subjectively) or in Petri Dishes (objectively). Can the two be reconciled, I very much doubt it!
To me this “science” makes no sense at all. I would also like to point out that in my career as a dentist in the UK from 1979 – 2015, I treated acute periapical dental abscesses that could not be satisfactorily, or painlessly drained (local anaesthesia does not work well near dental abscesses due to the changed pH of the surrounding soft and hard tissues) by using antibiotics. My first choice (if there was no penicillin allergy) was Phenoxymethylpenicillin 250 mg x 4 x 5 days. If that failed (which it did in about 10% of cases, with no change in this incidence at all, in those 36 years) I would prescribe Metronidazole 200mg x 3 x 7 days. These two drugs work on different bacteria, the former on aerobic (they need oxygen to survive) the latter on anaerobic (oxygen kills them). For someone going on holiday or with a future wedding etc I would prescribe them both. Taking Metronidazole precludes drinking alcohol because this combination produces severe vomiting, hence the non-automatic prescribing of both.
Another scare about the use of antibiotics is not what we want, or need, based on greed for taxpayer funded government grants. This “Study” is an irrelevance!
john cooknell
May 21, 2018 1:51 pm
Some people believe that antibiotics cause all sorts of health problems, people believe lots of things but just because they believe it doesn’t make it true.
The human bodies immune system is the most powerful “antibiotic” known, it can kill almost any pathogen, so to survive bugs have evolved that mimic the bodies own cells, so they don’t get recognised. Unfortunately the immune system then goes into overdrive to try and get rid of the pathogens and then it can start destroying the bodies own cells.
Anything to do with Climate Change, of course not.
Meanwhile in the U.K. from the BBC says so, so it must be true, department and its correspondent reporting on the Chelsea Flower Show comes the “factual” statement that it has been “proved” that the bacteria you are exposed to gardening make you healthier. Nothing to do with the fresh air or a bit of exercise then. I sometimes wonder if the plan is to simply drown everyone in a constant torrent of claims that it would take so much effort to refute, we will all be bludgeoned into despair.
I’m just waiting for the eruption in Hawaii to be blamed on climate change.
Anyone else feeling like they are in a bad version of Orwell’s 1984?
Dale S
May 21, 2018 2:30 pm
A +10C temperature change for less than a 5% increase in resistance? The true headline should be “Massive temperature increases makes very little difference to antibiotic resistance.”
John Hardy
May 21, 2018 2:33 pm
I cannot believe the number of studies that appear to confuse correlation and causation
LearDog
May 21, 2018 3:27 pm
Confirmation Bias much? Besides the fact that antibiotics operate in relatively stable environment (inside our bodies), it seems to me that any temperature-related effects might be associated with the method of delivery from the point of manufacture say, via a long-distance delivery service. Antibiotics sitting all day in a UPS, USPS or FedEx truck might not help their efficacy. Assuming no changes in all other factors (‘we can’t think of anything else’) is a classic logical fallacy.
ironargonaut
May 21, 2018 3:28 pm
No duh Sherlock, active bacteria multiple faster. I seriously doubt during winter in Montana very many bacteria are multiplying when compared to Florida.
Alan Tomalty
May 21, 2018 3:29 pm
Maybe someone else has pointed this out because I couldnt take the time to read everything but the following passage from the article basically proves that global warming has nothing to do with it.
“Local average minimum temperature increases of 10 degrees Celsius were found to be associated with 4.2, 2.2 and 3.6 percent increases in antibiotic resistant strains of E. coli, K. pneumoniae, and S. aureus, respectively.
More unsettling still, when looking at population density, the team found that an increase of 10,000 people per square mile was associated with three and six percent respective increases in antibiotic resistance in E. coli and K. pneumoniae, which are both Gram-negative species.”
Since even the IPCC says the temperatures globally have not warmed more than 0.7C in a century, this proves that the study was worthless. So now we have climate scientists not only producing worthless studies but actually admitting in the body of their own study that that their study was worthless. When will this madness stop?
Derek Colman
May 21, 2018 4:19 pm
Yes, when there is a correlation, that is cast iron proof. For instance, the number of people who died from drowning in a pool correlates with the number of movies Nicolas Cage appeared in, and the divorce rate in Maine correlates with the per capita consumption of margarine.
WXcycles
May 21, 2018 6:52 pm
We are at Def-Kook-1.
Two Minute Warning!
The CAGW peak-kook cult has now released WMDs (Weapons of Mass Dumbness), and are threatening to use indiscriminate climate dumb-bombs glohally against UHI affected cities, plus to continue to use children and state-media to prevent removal of their climate doomsday-bomb threats—duck ‘n cover!
– ends – https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2t5kytlPc9A
Geoff Sherrington
May 22, 2018 2:44 am
How did the researchers control for the effect of air conditioning? Was is robust to test against the local outside temperature, when most test subjects spent most time on average in air conditioning, which takes away much of the rise in minimum (night) temperatures outside? Then, air conditioning is a way to mix and recycle air that contains pathogens. So, test subjects with high exposure to air conditioning might be expected to interact with more pathogens and so increase antibiotic resistance.
Next, how did the experiments control for time spent by test subjects around hospitals, where infections are more common than many places elsewhere? Was there a blind component of nurses and doctors set against a similar sub-set of non-medical people? Then, at the next level on confounding, what was done to reflect that well-paid doctors were more likely to have more time in air conditioning?
This is not an argument that the study should not have been done. But, when you come down to effects that are so small as those reported, you have to take care about noise arising from extraneous variables. My quick take, FWIW, is that noise will blur this experiment into nothingness. Plausibly, it is too hard to do the experiment properly, because there are variables that we cannot even imagine as important, let alone those variables that we now should be studied, but for which there are no data. Geoff
ozspeaksup
May 22, 2018 4:22 am
Jim Gorman
May 21, 2018 at 12:55 pm
But where do they encounter the antibiotics in the Gulf Coast water or the trout stream in order to build up the resistance? It’s not really the growth rate but the exposure to antibiotics that creates the resistance.
=========
sewage outfalls pure n simply still toxic crap poured out daily by the mega litres
same reason down in aus for nitrogen/toxic etc claims for the damned reef , they keep blaming farmers but sydney n brisbane and parts between dump crap into th oceans and the current spreads it, and stormwater takes home n council abused chem muck from gardens right to sea also
paqyfelyc
May 22, 2018 4:56 am
“Scientists find link between increases in local temperature and antibiotic resistance” is fake news. You need to be NOT scientist to push such p-hacking claim. A correct headline would be
“new p-hacking: crackpots find link between increases in local temperature and antibiotic resistance”
Another “Remember when …. Oh, never mind” article
I rather think the title if the research paper should be, “Extreme temperature differences have little effect on number of drug-resistant bacterial strains.” After ignoring all sorts of confounding issues, they only managed to tease out a 4.2% increase?
What bothers me is, that despite giving a lot of pertinent numbers here, I did not see the actual numbers producing their results. How many different drug-resistant strains were actually found in each locale? Perhaps the info was provided in the actual paper (surely, it must have been). Too many times I have seen significant-seeming percentages disappear into insignificance when given the actual raw numbers. How many of the pathogens in all those records were drug-resistance strains of the three bacteria studied?
More junk science trying to get more grant money!
The normal human body core temperature is 37 Celsius (98.4 Fahrenheit), but can normally vary a degree above or below that without any apparent illness. As has been rightly said, by several people, a mammal responds to bacterial and viral infection by increasing the body temperature, which tends to kill these organisms. Prior to antibiotics, patients with life-threatening infections reached a point called a “Crisis”, this was the kill or cure mechanism, where either the infectious agent or the patient died as a result of a fever.
First of all everyone is in agreement that that global warming has stalled for the last 20 years (apart from the blip caused by the last El Nino, which was widely predicted), So how has antibiotic resistance increased due to global warming? Secondly, core body temperatures are much higher than the maximum summer temperatures of most of our planets regions. Antibiotic resistance can only be measured in humans (subjectively) or in Petri Dishes (objectively). Can the two be reconciled, I very much doubt it!
To me this “science” makes no sense at all. I would also like to point out that in my career as a dentist in the UK from 1979 – 2015, I treated acute periapical dental abscesses that could not be satisfactorily, or painlessly drained (local anaesthesia does not work well near dental abscesses due to the changed pH of the surrounding soft and hard tissues) by using antibiotics. My first choice (if there was no penicillin allergy) was Phenoxymethylpenicillin 250 mg x 4 x 5 days. If that failed (which it did in about 10% of cases, with no change in this incidence at all, in those 36 years) I would prescribe Metronidazole 200mg x 3 x 7 days. These two drugs work on different bacteria, the former on aerobic (they need oxygen to survive) the latter on anaerobic (oxygen kills them). For someone going on holiday or with a future wedding etc I would prescribe them both. Taking Metronidazole precludes drinking alcohol because this combination produces severe vomiting, hence the non-automatic prescribing of both.
Another scare about the use of antibiotics is not what we want, or need, based on greed for taxpayer funded government grants. This “Study” is an irrelevance!
Some people believe that antibiotics cause all sorts of health problems, people believe lots of things but just because they believe it doesn’t make it true.
The human bodies immune system is the most powerful “antibiotic” known, it can kill almost any pathogen, so to survive bugs have evolved that mimic the bodies own cells, so they don’t get recognised. Unfortunately the immune system then goes into overdrive to try and get rid of the pathogens and then it can start destroying the bodies own cells.
Anything to do with Climate Change, of course not.
The worst known plague in Earth’s history was once attributed not to a fungal pestilence but to man-made “climate change”. Ironically, climate change “researchers” helped spread the disease pathogen (an inconvenient truth not mentioned in the article) to remote jungles:
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/05/amphibians-decline-frogs-chytrid-fungi-bd-animals-science/?utm_source=ngp&utm_medium=crm-email&utm_content=wildscience_20180521&utm_campaign=editorial&utm_rd=%3C#itlscript>${CONTACTS_LIST.RIID_?c}&cmpid=org=ngp::mc=crm-email::src=ngp::cmp=editorial::add=wildscience_20180521::urid=${CONTACTS_LIST.RIID_?c}
Meanwhile in the U.K. from the BBC says so, so it must be true, department and its correspondent reporting on the Chelsea Flower Show comes the “factual” statement that it has been “proved” that the bacteria you are exposed to gardening make you healthier. Nothing to do with the fresh air or a bit of exercise then. I sometimes wonder if the plan is to simply drown everyone in a constant torrent of claims that it would take so much effort to refute, we will all be bludgeoned into despair.
I’m just waiting for the eruption in Hawaii to be blamed on climate change.
Anyone else feeling like they are in a bad version of Orwell’s 1984?
A +10C temperature change for less than a 5% increase in resistance? The true headline should be “Massive temperature increases makes very little difference to antibiotic resistance.”
I cannot believe the number of studies that appear to confuse correlation and causation
Confirmation Bias much? Besides the fact that antibiotics operate in relatively stable environment (inside our bodies), it seems to me that any temperature-related effects might be associated with the method of delivery from the point of manufacture say, via a long-distance delivery service. Antibiotics sitting all day in a UPS, USPS or FedEx truck might not help their efficacy. Assuming no changes in all other factors (‘we can’t think of anything else’) is a classic logical fallacy.
No duh Sherlock, active bacteria multiple faster. I seriously doubt during winter in Montana very many bacteria are multiplying when compared to Florida.
Maybe someone else has pointed this out because I couldnt take the time to read everything but the following passage from the article basically proves that global warming has nothing to do with it.
“Local average minimum temperature increases of 10 degrees Celsius were found to be associated with 4.2, 2.2 and 3.6 percent increases in antibiotic resistant strains of E. coli, K. pneumoniae, and S. aureus, respectively.
More unsettling still, when looking at population density, the team found that an increase of 10,000 people per square mile was associated with three and six percent respective increases in antibiotic resistance in E. coli and K. pneumoniae, which are both Gram-negative species.”
Since even the IPCC says the temperatures globally have not warmed more than 0.7C in a century, this proves that the study was worthless. So now we have climate scientists not only producing worthless studies but actually admitting in the body of their own study that that their study was worthless. When will this madness stop?
Yes, when there is a correlation, that is cast iron proof. For instance, the number of people who died from drowning in a pool correlates with the number of movies Nicolas Cage appeared in, and the divorce rate in Maine correlates with the per capita consumption of margarine.
We are at Def-Kook-1.
Two Minute Warning!
The CAGW peak-kook cult has now released WMDs (Weapons of Mass Dumbness), and are threatening to use indiscriminate climate dumb-bombs glohally against UHI affected cities, plus to continue to use children and state-media to prevent removal of their climate doomsday-bomb threats—duck ‘n cover!
– ends –
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2t5kytlPc9A
How did the researchers control for the effect of air conditioning? Was is robust to test against the local outside temperature, when most test subjects spent most time on average in air conditioning, which takes away much of the rise in minimum (night) temperatures outside? Then, air conditioning is a way to mix and recycle air that contains pathogens. So, test subjects with high exposure to air conditioning might be expected to interact with more pathogens and so increase antibiotic resistance.
Next, how did the experiments control for time spent by test subjects around hospitals, where infections are more common than many places elsewhere? Was there a blind component of nurses and doctors set against a similar sub-set of non-medical people? Then, at the next level on confounding, what was done to reflect that well-paid doctors were more likely to have more time in air conditioning?
This is not an argument that the study should not have been done. But, when you come down to effects that are so small as those reported, you have to take care about noise arising from extraneous variables. My quick take, FWIW, is that noise will blur this experiment into nothingness. Plausibly, it is too hard to do the experiment properly, because there are variables that we cannot even imagine as important, let alone those variables that we now should be studied, but for which there are no data. Geoff
Jim Gorman
May 21, 2018 at 12:55 pm
But where do they encounter the antibiotics in the Gulf Coast water or the trout stream in order to build up the resistance? It’s not really the growth rate but the exposure to antibiotics that creates the resistance.
=========
sewage outfalls pure n simply still toxic crap poured out daily by the mega litres
same reason down in aus for nitrogen/toxic etc claims for the damned reef , they keep blaming farmers but sydney n brisbane and parts between dump crap into th oceans and the current spreads it, and stormwater takes home n council abused chem muck from gardens right to sea also
“Scientists find link between increases in local temperature and antibiotic resistance” is fake news. You need to be NOT scientist to push such p-hacking claim. A correct headline would be
“new p-hacking: crackpots find link between increases in local temperature and antibiotic resistance”