The Yanomami community lives in huts in a remote village in southern Venezuela. Photo by Oscar Noya-Alarcon

Members of the Yanomami Tribe who live in southern Venezuela carry antibiotic resistance genes even though they have not sustained prolonged contact with outsiders, according to researchers.

The community is located in a remote mountainous area and was previously unknown till about 2009. Despite their isolation, tribal members showed resistance to various antibiotic drugs, suggesting that resistance is not an issue that has emerged in the modern medical era.

"We have already run out of drugs to treat some types of multidrug-resistant infections, many of which can be lethal, raising the bleak prospect of a post-antibiotic era," Gautam Dantas, a professor at Washington University and one of the authors of a study that was published in Science Advances, said in a press release.

A prior study of the tribal members showed that their bodies contained one of the most diverse collections of bacteria recorded in humans.

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