Sometimes this agricultural use is intense. Farm-generated resistance does not stay put. Fluoroquinolone antibiotics are widely used in human medicine, and when they were approved for treating chickens in 1995, scientists predicted that pathogens with resistance to these antibiotics would soon be causing human infections. For instance, Campylobacter spp. As predicted, pathogens with fluoroquinolone resistance also began to turn up in humans.
Investigators find a similar pattern in Europe.
Fluoroquinolone resistance in Campylobacter spp. In Salmonella , by contrast, resistance to this antibiotic depends on mutations occurring in two independent genes. Scientists have already detected Salmonella with one of the mutations and with a decreased susceptibility to fluoroquinolones. Researchers worry that fluoroquinolones might soon join this list. During a recent outbreak of DT104 in Denmark, for instance, a patient died despite being treated with fluoroquinolones.