Tag Archives: public health threat

Research – Salmonella Antibiotic Resistance

Food Safety NewsSalm

The number of antimicrobial-resistant Salmonella serotypes hasn’t increased drastically in recent years, but drug-resistant Salmonella continues to pose a public health threat in the United States, particularly as resistance spreads across classes of drugs, necessitates the use of more expensive drugs, makes treatment less effective, and, in worse-case scenarios, leaves infections untreatable.

A recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study identified increasing resistance to a class of drugs called Cephalosporins, which are commonly used to treat severe Salmonella infections in adults and are the main drug of choice when treating children, for whom the fluoroquinolone class of drugs is not recommended. Currently, about five percent of Salmonella strains are resistant to Cephalosporins, mostly in cases of Salmonella Heidelberg and Salmonella Newport.