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The conversation about the growing threat of antibiotic resistance often focuses on prescriptions and patient habits: too many pills, taken too often, for wrong reasons.
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But researchers investigating why India’s resistance rates tower above those of countries in Europe or the US have recently uncovered something startling that upends that view.
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The resulting study, published in The Lancet eClinicalMedicine, found that many patients who reported taking no antibiotics were still carrying high levels of resistance.
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Some 83 percent of Indian patients carry antibiotic-resistant bacteria before they even enter a hospital, it found. The resistance was not coming from prescription drugs at all.
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“Resistant bacteria are entering the body through food, milk, agricultural products, through the environment itself,” says Dr D Nageshwar Reddy, lead author of the study.
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This finding emerged after intense debate with international researchers who could not understand how Indians showed extreme resistance without reported antibiotic use.