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The use of antimicrobials in agricultural, veterinary and medical practice exerts selective pressure on environmental microbiota, promoting the emergence and spread of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), a global concern for the One Health Initiative Task Force (OHITF). Honeybees have been studied as bioindicators of AMR in the environment, but little is known about beehive products like honey and pollen. The aim of this study was to assess the prevalence of AMR genes (ARGs) in beehive products and investigated their origins. Specifically, possible associations between ARGs, microbiota and other characteristics of different honey and pollen samples, including country of origin, flower type, type of commercial distribution and environmental factors, such as land use, weather and composition of the environment surrounding the beehives were investigated. We found that beehive products harboured ARGs conferring resistance to β-lactams, macrolides, (fluoro)quinolones and polymyxins. Most samples possessed resistance to multiple antimicrobial classes, with honey and pollen showing similar ARG profiles. Even if Lactobacillus and Acinetobacter genera were common in the microbial communities of both honey and pollen, Bacillus, Clostridium, and Bombella defined honey microbiota, while Pseudomonas and Vibrio were enriched in pollen. ErmB and blaTEM-1 co-occurred with Lactobacillus and Fructobacillus, while positive associations between β-lactams and macrolides and anthropogenic environments (i.e. industrial and commercial areas and non-irrigated arable lands) were found. Altogether, our findings suggest that ARGs in honey and pollen might originate from the honeybee foraging environment, and that the beehive products can be used as bioindicators of the AMR environmental contamination.

A conference abstract from NIRItalia online 2021 in English and Italian., This research was financially supported by Padova University (Project CPTA158894/15).

Oral-transmucosal (OTM) drug delivery refers to noninvasive and painless administration of medical preparations through any oral cavity membrane to achieve systemic effects (Sattar et al., 2014). Regarding sedative drugs, OTM administration is very attractive in veterinary medicine, especially for patients difficult to inject and restrain (Messenger et al., 2016). This study aims to compare the pharmacokinetics of dexmedetomidine after OTM and intramuscular (IM) administration combined with methadone. After obtaining Ethical Committee approval and owner’s written consent, eight dogs, were administered with dexmedetomidine (10 mg/kg) and methadone (0.4 mg/kg) by OTM and other 4 dogs by IM route. Blood samples were collected at prefixed times up to four hours. Dexmedetomidine was quantified by a validated HPLC-MS method. On dexmedetomidine concentrations, a pharmacokinetic analysis was carried out with a noncompartmental approach (Phoenix WinNonlin® 7.0, Pharsight, Cary, NC). Mean ± SD terminal half-lives of dexmedetomidine were 187.42 ± 109.66 and 94.78 ± 34.08 min after OTM and IM administration, respectively. Maximum serum (Cmax) concentrations were 0.83 ± 0.32 and 9.09 ± 2.46 ng/mL for OTM and IM administration, respectively. Time to maximum concentration (Tmax) were 44.38 ± 32.16 and 21.25±11.39 min by OTM and IM administration, respectively. Area under the curve from 0 to the last measured concentration (AUClast) were 103.75 ± 30.23 and 614.87 ± 77.15 min*ng/mL for OTM and IM administration, respectively. Cmax, Tmax and AUClast values by OTM route demonstrate a lower and delayed absorption of the drug compared to IM. To complete the study, the pharmacokinetic analysis of methadone is foreseen, so as a clinical trial to compare the clinical effects of the combination of dexmedetomidine and methadone by OTM and IM administration and to establish an effective dosage of oral-transumucosal route in dogs for this association., International Journal of Health, Animal Science and Food Safety, V. 4, N. 1s (2017)

Pyrrolizidine alkaloids (PAs) are natural toxins, supposed to be converted to hepatotoxic metabolites in the liver of mammalians, and preventing the uptake of PAs is the only way to reduce the attendant health risks. A liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) method was developed according to the Decision 2002/657/EC, to evaluate the contamination of Veneto honey by the following pyrrolizidine alkaloids: echimidine, heliotrine, lycopsamine, retrorsine, senecionine, and seneciphylline, as well as their N-oxides (pyrrolizidine alkaloid N-oxides (PANOs)). Before the solid-phase extraction, a reduction step with zinc dust in the presence of sulfuric acid was carried out for the reduction of PANOs to PAs in honey samples. For all of the analytes, the mean recovery ranged between 82.70 and 104.16 % and the limit of quantification (LOQ) was 0.25 μg kg−1, fully satisfying the LOQ of 1 μg kg−1 as requested by EFSA (2012). The validated method was applied for the analysis of 60 Veneto samples produced from local beekeepers. Among the samples, 17 % were positive for the PAs monitored, and their total PA contents ranged from 0.6 to 17.6 μg kg−1. In all of the samples, the contribution from the PANOs appeared to be negligible. The total PA contents found in the Veneto honey samples never exceeded the limit of 0.42 μg per day for an individual weighing 60 kg, established by the German Federal Institute of Risk Assessment (BfR) in 2011. These preliminary results provide useful advice to beekeepers for finding the most suitable location for beehives to achieve a substantial reduction of the PAs in honey.