Minor environmental concentrations of antibiotics can modify bacterial virulence in co-infection with a non-targeted parasite.

ABSTRACT: Leakage of medical residues into the environment can significantly impact natural communities. For example, antibiotic contamination from agriculture and aquaculture can directly influence targeted pathogens, but also other non-targeted taxa of commensals and parasites that regularly co-occur and co-infect the same host. Consequently, antibiotics could significantly alter interspecific interactions and epidemiology of the co-infecting parasite community. We studied how minor environmental concentrations of antibiotic affects the co-infection of two parasites, the bacterium Flavobacterium columnare and the fluke Diplostomum pseudospathaceum, in their fish host. We found that antibiotic in feed, and particularly the minute concentration in water, significantly decreased bacterial virulence a

SUBMITTER: Sundberg LR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6303518 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature