Radboud University Nijmegen, Institute for Water & Wetland Research, Department of Environmental Science, POB 9010, NL-6500, GL, Nijmegen, Netherlands.
Radboud University Nijmegen, Institute for Water & Wetland Research, Department of Environmental Science, POB 9010, NL-6500, GL, Nijmegen, Netherlands.
Sci Total Environ. 2019 Apr 1;659:335-341. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.12.233. Epub 2018 Dec 21.
The successful treatment of infectious diseases heavily relies on the therapeutic usage of antibiotics. However, the high use of antibiotics in humans and animals leads to increasing pressure on bacterial populations in favour of resistant phenotypes. Antibiotics reach the environment from a variety of emission sources and are being detected at relatively low concentrations. Given the possibility of selective pressure to occur at sub-inhibitory concentrations, the ecological impact of environmental antibiotic levels on microbial communities and resistance levels is vastly unknown. Quantification of antibiotic-resistance genes (ARG) and of antibiotic concentrations is becoming commonplace. Yet, these two parameters are often assessed separately and in a specific spatiotemporal context, thus missing the opportunity to investigate how antibiotics and ARGs relate. Furthermore, antibiotic (multi)resistance has been receiving ever growing attention from researchers, policy-makers, businesses and civil society. Our aim was to collect the limited data on antibiotic concentrations and ARG abundance currently available to explore if a relationship could be defined in surface waters, sediments and wastewaters. A metric of antibiotic selective pressure, i.e. the sum of concentrations corrected for microbial inhibition potency, was used to correlate the presence of antibiotics in the environment to total relative abundance of ARG while controlling for basic sources of non-independent variability, such as country, year, study, sample and antibiotic class. The results of this meta-analysis show a significant statistical effect of antibiotic pressure and type of environmental compartment on the increase of ARG abundance even at very low levels. If global environmental antibiotic pollution continues, ARG abundance is expected to continue as well. Moreover, our analysis emphasizes the importance of integrating existing information particularly when attempting to describe complex relationships with limited mechanistic understanding.
传染病的成功治疗在很大程度上依赖于抗生素的治疗应用。然而，人类和动物中抗生素的大量使用导致了细菌种群中耐药表型的压力不断增加。抗生素从各种排放源进入环境，并以相对较低的浓度被检测到。由于在亚抑制浓度下可能发生选择压力，因此环境抗生素水平对微生物群落和耐药水平的生态影响还知之甚少。抗生素耐药基因 (ARG) 和抗生素浓度的定量分析已经变得很普遍。然而，这两个参数通常是分开评估的，并且是在特定的时空背景下进行的，因此错过了研究抗生素和 ARG 如何相关的机会。此外，抗生素（多）耐药性已经引起了研究人员、政策制定者、企业和民间社会越来越多的关注。我们的目的是收集目前关于抗生素浓度和 ARG 丰度的有限数据，以探讨在地表水、沉积物和废水中是否可以定义它们之间的关系。抗生素选择压力的度量标准，即校正微生物抑制效力后的浓度总和，用于将环境中抗生素的存在与 ARG 的总相对丰度相关联，同时控制国家、年份、研究、样本和抗生素类别等非独立变异性的基本来源。这项荟萃分析的结果表明，即使在非常低的水平下，抗生素压力和环境隔室的类型对 ARG 丰度的增加也有显著的统计影响。如果全球环境抗生素污染继续下去，ARG 的丰度预计也会继续增加。此外，我们的分析强调了整合现有信息的重要性，特别是在尝试描述具有有限机制理解的复杂关系时。
