‘Resistance seen in deep sea bacteria too’

VADODARA: If you love seafood, here’s a caveat. The shellfish on your plate may be antibiotic-resistant. That means, if you happen to fall sick after consuming it, chances are your recovery period may get longer than normal.Reason? The massive dumping of antibiotic drugs in the coastal areas has rendered bacteria, even those deep inside the sea, resistant to normal drugs prescribed to treat common ailments like fever , cold, cough or diarrhoea.A study carried out by a group of marine scientists and biotechnologists from Gujarat has for the first time revealed that a large number of bacteria that are found in the stretches of the Gulf of Khambhat and the Gulf of Kutch are increasingly getting resistant to commonly-used antibiotics.What is more alarming is the antibiotic resistance seen in bacteria even in the deeper sediments of both the gulfs that fall in the Kathiawar peninsula.This finding, which was published in the prestigious research journal – Nature: Scientific Reports – busts the popular myth that deeper inside the sea the water is healthy and rich in biodiversity.In the case of the two gulfs, it was a common belief that the water of the Arabian sea here was healthy and hosting good biodiversity despite the heavy presence of industrial plants on the coastal belt including fertilizer, chemicals, oil refineries, power plants, and salt pans.“We had collected samples from sediments lying one metre deep from the bottom of the sea and not from the shore,” said Dr Neelam Nathani of Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University (MKBU). The situation poses a danger to human health as infection with such kind of resistant bacteria could become untreatable, the scientist said.Dr Chandrashekhar Mootapally from the Department of Marine Science said that the creek of the Gulf of Kutch and the mouth of the Gulf of Khambhat were the most diverse in resistance gene profile.“It was observed that these bacteria were having more resistance genes against drugs like macrolides, glycopeptides and tetracycline. These are the drugs that are commonly used by humans for treating common ailments like fever, cold, cough and diarrhoea among others,” he said.