article · Animals
Colistin serves as a critical last-resort antibiotic for treating severe multidrug-resistant human infections, yet its historical use in livestock for disease prevention and growth promotion has encouraged the spread of resistant bacteria. A survey of 195 broiler chickens across six farms in Tunisia examined cloacal swab DNA for ten known mobilised colistin resistance genes using molecular methods. The testing revealed that 41.5 percent of the chickens carried the mcr-1 resistance gene. Every investigated farm showed positive results, with resistance rates ranging between 13 percent and 93 percent per farm. The findings confirm that colistin resistance is widely distributed in Tunisian poultry. They also indicate that direct molecular testing without bacterial culture provides an effective approach for tracking the spread of antimicrobial resistance genes in farm animals.
Colistin is one of the final remaining defences against deadly, drug-resistant bacterial infections in human medicine. Detecting widespread colistin resistance genes in poultry highlights a significant public health threat, as agricultural overuse can accelerate the loss of effective antibiotics. Demonstrating fast, culture-independent detection helps improve surveillance systems needed to manage and curb antimicrobial resistance.
This research informs veterinary diagnostics and epidemiological surveillance programmes by showing that culture-independent DNA testing can monitor resistance genes directly from farm swabs. Potential users include agricultural regulators, veterinary diagnostic laboratories, and livestock health managers seeking early detection tools. As an applied diagnostic survey, the detection approach is functionally tested, though commercial deployment would require validated diagnostic kits and standardized testing protocols.
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Colistin is a polymyxin antibiotic that has been used in veterinary medicine for decades, as a treatment for enterobacterial digestive infections as well as a prophylactic treatment and growth promoter in livestock animals, leading to the emergence and spread of colistin-resistant Gram-negative bacteria and to a great public health concern, considering that colistin is one of the last-resort antibiotics against multidrug-resistant deadly infections in clinical practice. Previous studies performed on livestock animals in Tunisia using culture-dependent methods highlighted the presence of colistin-resistant Gram-negative bacteria. In the present survey, DNA extracted from cloacal swabs from 195 broiler chickens from six farms in Tunisia was tested via molecular methods for the ten mobilized colistin resistance (mcr) genes known so far. Of the 195 animals tested, 81 (41.5%) were mcr-1 positive. All the farms tested were positive, with a prevalence ranging from 13% to 93%. These results confirm the spread of colistin resistance in livestock animals in Tunisia and suggest that the investigation of antibiotic resistance genes by culture-independent methods could be a useful means of conducting epidemiological studies on the spread of antimicrobial resistance.
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DOI: 10.3390/ani13081409
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