Seventy chicken samples from Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR), tested by the Centre for Science and Environment, were found to be carrying traces of five antibiotics. Largescale misuse and overuse of antibiotics in chicken has lead to the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in chicken itself. The CSE report claimed that these bacteria were then transmitted to humans through food or environment. The CSE also warned that eating small doses of these antibiotics through chicken could also lead to development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in humans. The report, which was released on Wednesday, is based on the chicken samples picked up from Delhi, Noida, Gurgaon, Faridabad and Ghaziabad. “Three tissues muscles, liver and kidney were tested for the presence of six antibiotics widely used in poultry oxytetracycline, chlortetracycline and doxycycline (class tetracyclines), enrofl-oxacin and ciprofloxacin (class fluoroquinolones) and neomycin, an aminoglycoside,” the CSE said. CSE director-general Sunita Narain said the poultry industry was using antibiotics as a growth promoter. “Chickens are fed antibiotics so that they gain weight and grow faster. The study found residues of antibiotics in 40 per cent of the samples of chicken that were tested.”The tests done by the CSE showed the presence of antibiotic residues in the range of 3.37-131.75 ug/kg. “Of the 40 per cent samples found tainted with antibiotic residues, 22.9 per cent had residue of only one antibiotic and the remaining 17.1 per cent samples had residues of more than one medicine. In one sample purchased from Gurgaon, a cocktail of three antibiotics oxytetracycline, doxycycline and enrofloxacin was found. This indicates rampant use of multiple antibiotics in the poultry industry, the CSE said in its report. To ascertain the linkage between overuse of antibiotics in poultry farms and antibiotic resistance in humans, the CSE researchers are said to have reviewed 13 studies conducted by various government and private hospitals between 2012 and 2013 across the country. The researchers found that the resistance was very high against ciprofloxacin, doxycycline and tetracyclines. These were the same antibiotics that have reportedly been detected in the chicken samples.The report said there was a growing evidence that resistance to fluoroquinolones, such as ciprofloxacin, was rapidly increasing in the country. “Treating fatal diseases like sepsis, pneumonia and tuberculosis (TB) with fluoroquinolones is becoming tough because microbes that cause these diseases are increasingly becoming resistant to fluoroquinolones.” Replying to a question in Parliament recently, Union health minister Dr Harsh Vardhan had said that the number of multi-drug resistant (MDR)-TB cases in the country had increased five times between 2011 and 2013. Studies show that one-third of MDR-TB cases are resistant to fluoroquinolones, which are critical for MDR-TB treatmen