High dietary zinc feeding promotes persistence of multi-resistant E. coli in the swine gut.

ABSTRACT: High levels of zinc oxide are used frequently as feed additive in pigs to improve gut health and growth performance and are still suggested as an alternative to antimicrobial growth promoters. However, we have recently described an increase of multi-resistant E. coli in association to zinc feeding in piglets. This previous study focused on clonal diversity of E. coli, observing the effect on multi-resistant strains by chance. To shed further light into this highly important topic and falsify our previous findings, we performed a zinc pig feeding trial where we specifically focused on in-depth analysis of antimicrobial resistant E. coli. Under controlled experimental conditions, piglets were randomly allocated to a high dietary zinc (zinc group) and a background zinc feeding group (control

SUBMITTER: Ciesinski L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5786291 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature