When I began my quest to find a natural treatment for my UTIs (see Dec 23, 2013), I soon learned that many women have antibiotic-resistant UTI. I went to see an expert on E. coli infections, Prof. Lee Riley, MD, because UTI is one of the major infections caused by E. coli. Lee and his grad student Amee did studied women who went to the UC Berkeley Student Health Center to get antibiotics for a UTI. Surprisingly, one-quarter of the students had an E coli infection resistant to antibiotics. This was not good news.

Read their results.

Amee, now a professor at McGill University in Canada, wanted to figure out how women ended up with antibiotic-resistant E. coli. She compared the E coli found in chicken, pork, and beef to the E. coli causing the women’s UTIs. Lo and behold, Amee found that the women’s antibiotic-resistant E coli was the same as the E. coli found in chicken. Now we have a link between feeding antibiotics to chicken and antibiotic-resistant UTIs—a major health problem.

Read more about Amee’s research.