Key Points
For a team of Canadian and French researchers, dark clouds on the horizon are potentially ominous not because they signal an approaching storm -- but because they were found in a recent study to carry drug-resistant bacteria over long distances...
"We found that they are carried by the wind into the atmosphere and can travel long distances -- around the world -- at high altitudes in clouds," he told AFP...
The researchers from Laval University in Quebec City and Clermont Auvergne University in central France searched for antibiotic-resistant genes from bacteria found in cloud samples...
Health authorities have repeatedly warned these adaptations are becoming what the study described as a "major sanitary concern worldwide," making it harder -- in some cases impossible -- to treat certain bacterial infections as antibiotics use continues to rise in health care and agriculture...
The study offered no conclusions on the potential health effects of the spread in the atmosphere of antibiotic resistant bacteria -- estimating that only five percent to 50 percent of the organisms could be alive and potentially active...
