Antibiotic Resistance in Pharmaceutical Industry Effluents and Effluent-Impacted Environments

Antibiotic resistance: Global health crisis and metagenomics

“…Anthropogenic activities play a critical role in the environmental dissemination of antimicrobial resistance. Aquatic ecosystem serves as a hotspot for the dissemination of antimicrobial resistance [ 16 , [31] , [32] , [33] , [34] ]. The pharmaceutical industry, aquaculture, and wastewater treatment plants are among the significant anthropogenic sources and drivers of ARGs in the environment.…”

“…However, to what extent these sources contribute to the selection of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is still underexplored [ [35] , [36] , [37] ]. Recently few studies have shown that pharmaceutical industry effluent and wastewater discharge alters the microbial community and antibiotic richness in receiving water bodies [ 32 , 34 , 38 ]. Antibiotics are also being used for livestock production (therapeutic and prophylactic purpose) and at a subtherapeutic concentration to boost growth which is also an essential factor contributing in the environmental selection and dissemination of AMR [ 39 ].…”

Effects of industrial effluents containing moderate levels of antibiotic mixtures on the abundance of antibiotic resistance genes and bacterial community composition in exposed creek sediments

“…Consequently, environments polluted by discharges from antibiotic manufacturing have been identified as ´high risk´ environments for AR selection and dissemination into human or animal pathogens. It is, therefore, of urgent concern to investigate such contaminated areas for determining the abundance of AR and identifying the critical control points to reduce its emergence and spread (Šimatović and Udiković-Kolić, 2019).…”

“…Large environmental pollution from the antibiotic manufacturing sector was reported to be a problem mostly in Asian countries, such as India, China, Korea and Pakistan, but also, to a lesser extent, in Europe (Larsson et al, 2014;Bielen et al, 2017;Šimatović and Udiković-Kolić, 2019). Very high, mg/L-levels of antibiotics have been detected in effluents from antibiotic production facilities in above-mentioned countries, which led to high antibiotic pollution as well as the selection, maintenance and spread of AR in the receiving aquatic environment (Flach et al, 2015;González-Plaza et al, 2019;Larsson et al, 2014;Šimatović and Udiković-Kolić, 2019). Additionally, the exposure to these effluents introduced various toxic effects in fish and other aquatic organisms as well as pronounced changes in exposed aquatic bacterial communities (Bielen et al, 2017;Milaković et al, 2019;Kristiansson et al, 2011;Carlsson et al, 2009).…”

“…In contrast to such high antibiotic loads in effluents from antibiotic production companies, effluents from companies involved in the formulation of drugs contain much more modest antibiotic levels (typically <100 µg/L), however still being selective for AR (Šimatović and Udiković-Kolić, 2019;Bielen et al, 2017). The levels are still about one to two orders of magnitude higher than levels commonly detected in municipal effluents (low µg/L; Sabri et al, 2018, Michael et al, 2013, which were also shown to increase the abundance, diversity and potential spread of ARGs in recipient water bodies (Lekunberri et al, 2018;Khan et al, 2019;Corno et al, 2019).…”