E. coli round-upResearchers find human-chimp E. coli transmission
Study at a safari park in Uganda is the first to show a link between humans and a controlled animal population; many chimps found resistant to antibiotics
This is no time for monkey business. Amid growing concerns over the spread of E. coli — see, for instance, recent reports about its transmission via Peter Pan peanut butter — researchers at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana have reported that workers at a safari park in Uganda are exchanging the bacteria with the chimpanzees under their supervision. Not only is this the first known transfer of E. coli between humans and chimps in a protected area (other occurences have involved wild chimps visiting human garabage dumps), but some of those strains migrating to chimps are resistant to antibiotics. The findings at Kibale National Park, professor Tony Goldberg said, show that over-the-counter sales of antibiotics can have an impact on wildlife. “This expands our notion of the situations in which people and chimps can exchange microbes,” Goldberg said. “Habitat overlap, even without direct contact between people and primates, is sufficient for the exchange to occur.”
-read more in this Physorg report
