Reduce antibiotic use in experiments
20 Mar 2015
The use of antibiotics in laboratory experiments is adding to the global problem of antimicrobial resistance and should be reduced, says University of East Anglia (UEA) researcher Laura Bowater.
Antimicrobial resistance currently claims the lives of more than 50,000 people per year in the US and Europe and the use of antibiotics such as ampicillin, chloramphenicol and tetracycline - which are administered both clinically and in the lab - is further increasing the problem, Bowater said.
“The discovery of antibiotics was heralded as a magic bullet for modern medicine. Using antibiotics in research has transformed scientific discovery,” Bowater said.
“But now antibiotic resistance is a catastrophic threat - and it threatens the achievements of modern medicine.”
Bowater said that certain industries, such as medicine and agriculture, have been asked to cut the use of antibiotics wherever possible.
“But this message needs to be extended to scientists too because there is a widespread use of antibiotics in the research community,” Bowater said.
To buck the trend of using antibiotics in research laboratories, Bowater suggests a heavier reliance on synthetic options and technologies that avoid the use of clinically important antibiotics.
Bowater said improvements could be made to the systems that researchers currently employ if the appropriate amount of time and effort were put in.
“At the very least researchers must be encouraged to use antibiotics more responsibly and sparingly in both educational and research settings,” she added.
