One Health Series on ABX

Watch the 3:35 Video Interview Here

“Antimicrobial resistance is becoming more of a problem because more and more of our infections are resistant to antibiotics, thus limiting the effectiveness of these drugs,” LaPara says. “There are predictions that antimicrobial resistance will actually be responsible for more deaths in the next 50 years than cancer.”

LaPara is an environmental engineer at the University of Minnesota. He’s devoted the past 15 years to exploring antibiotic resistance – looking for clues that could slow the growth of resistant bacteria in both urban and rural communities.

“The problem with antibiotic resistance is almost certainly related to how much antibiotics we use. The unfortunate part of that is we can’t stop using antibiotics. They’re incredibly important. This is called the antibiotic resistance paradox – the thing that we need destroys the thing that we need,” he says. “So, we need other solutions beyond reducing antibiotics use.”

LaPara and his students have turned to investigating the environment, searching for antimicrobial-resistant genes in materials like human and animal waste. There, the bacteria compound the problem.

Click here to read the full press release

Earlier Editions of the One Health Series

To download Part 1 of the series with Mark Gardiner click here

To download Part 2 of the series with Dr. Justin Welsh click here

To download Part 3 of the series with Dr. Randall Spare click here

To download Part 4 of the series with Jeroen van de Ven click here