Antibiotics are used in livestock production for the treatment of diseases and for improvement of feed efficiency and growth. However, agricultural use of antibiotics may be partly responsible for the emergence of antibiotic-resistant organisms. Large amounts of managed manure are land applied, which opens the door for the spread of antibiotic resistance in the environment. Thus, the goal of this project was to evaluate the effects of lagoon treatment on the persistence of antibiotic resistant enteric bacteria isolated from swine feces. Both cool season and warm season samples were collected from a swine farm located in Sampson County, NC. Each season samples included three nursery swine fecal samples, three nursery swine lagoon liquid samples, four finishing swine fecal samples, three finishing swine lagoon liquid samples, and four soil samples from both nursery and finishing swine spray field. A total of 4032 E. coli isolates and 4896 Enterococcus isolates were obtained from the samples. The antibiotic resistance profiles of the isolates were determined using a set of antibiotics at various concentrations. The antibiotic cephalothin, erythromycin, oxytetracycline, tetracycline, streptomycin, and neomycin were tested for both bacterial species, but different concentrations were applied. For E. coli, rifampicin was also tested; for Enterococcus, chlortetracycline, vancomycin, and amoxicillin were also tested. After antibiotic resistance analysis was achieved, 25 isolates were randomly selected from each sample for further evaluation by polymerase chain reaction test. Soil samples were collected; however, fecal indicator bacteria were not recovered. Additionally, E. coli was not recovered from warm season nursery lagoon samples. All isolates displayed multiple antibiotic resistance, and for the isolates from the same source, the resistance patterns were similar for the antibiotics within the same antibiotic family. Percentages of resistant isolates were greater in nursery fecal samples than in finishing fecal samples for majority of antibiotic tests. For nursery samples, percentages of antibiotic resistant isolates decreased after lagoon treatment for majority of antibiotic tests. For finishing samples, no such trend was obvious. The results indicated that antibiotic resistant isolates still persist in the lagoon liquid, which may cause potential risk to human and environmental health. And because antibiotic resistance may affect later therapeutic and subtherapeutic value of these antibiotics, management strategies of agricultural antibiotic use may be improved. The antibiotic resistance patterns and molecular banding patterns of the isolates were not unique to a specific source. The results suggest that there is considerable overlap among nursery feces, nursery lagoon, finishing feces and finishing lagoon samples. However, if combine of the feces and the lagoon isolates together and only classify isolates from nursery to finishing swine, the percentages of correctly classified isolates became larger. The results suggest that ARA and PCR would best be used for identifying fecal contamination from swine sources based on broad categories (nursery versus finishing) instead of relying on these procedures for specific identification of lagoon and feces separately.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NCSU/oai:NCSU:etd-05082007-161836 |
| Date | 07 June 2007 |
| Creators | Qian, Leilei |
| Contributors | Daniel W. Israel, Alexandria K. Graves, Eric van Heugten |
| Publisher | NCSU |
| Source Sets | North Carolina State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/theses/available/etd-05082007-161836/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dis sertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to NC State University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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