Cow Credit: JelleS on flickr
We can't predict how these bacterial strains will evolve - they could become more resistant, more virulent or better able to jump between species." - —Dr Mark Holmes Every so often, research laboratories and hospitals testing patients for the superbug methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) have come across an oddity: a strain that appeared to be MRSA because it was resistant to antibiotics but one that tested negative with the 'gold standard' molecular test. The quirky cases were so infrequent that they were usually filed away for future analysis or disregarded. Until, that is, PhD student Laura Garcia-Alvarez from Cambridge's Department of Veterinary Medicine had the tenacity to look a little further at a bacterial strain she had spotted in cows' milk. MRSA first appeared in 1961 and epidemic strains of this difficult-to-treat bacterium have since spread worldwide in hospitals and the community. In the farming world, MRSA causes bovine mastitis - an infection of cows' udders - affecting both animal welfare and milk yields. Garcia-Alvarez was working with Mark Holmes on bovine mastitis when she came across one of the 'curious anomalies'.
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