The ‘superbug’ MRSA arose in hedgehogs long before the medical use of antibiotics

“Using sequencing technology, we’ve traced the genes that give mecC-MRSA its antibiotic resistance all the way back to when they first appeared, and we’ve found that they were there as early as the 1800s,” he said. Doctor Ewan Harrison, a researcher at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and the University of Cambridge and one of the senior authors of the new study.

“Our study indicates that it was not the use of penicillin that caused the appearance of MRSA, it was a natural biological process. We think that MRSA originated in a struggle for survival on the skin of hedgehogs, and that it subsequently developed spread to livestock and to people through direct contact,” he said.

Antibiotic resistance in bacteria that cause infections in humans was previously thought to be a modern phenomenon, driven by the clinical use of antibiotics. Antibiotic misuse is now accelerating that process and antibiotic resistance is increasing to dangerously high levels in all parts of the world.

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