Houseflies buzzing around fast-food restaurants could be spreading antibiotic-resistant bacteria, a study of fly-borne microbes suggests.
Although researchers know that drug-resistant microbes develop and are concentrated in places such as hospitals and livestock and poultry farms, it’s unclear how these bacteria spread beyond those places.
Suspecting that houseflies might be transporting the bugs, Ludek Zurek and Lilia Macovei of Kansas State University in Manhattan trapped flies in five fast-food restaurants in northeastern Kansas. The researchers isolated from the flies bacteria called enterococci, which are known to readily transmit antibiotic-resistance genes from one strain of bacteria to another.