Understanding associations between antimicrobial agents usage and antimicrobial resistance genes prevalence at the community level using wastewater-based epidemiology: A Spanish pilot study

Biosolids and reclaimed waters are seen as precious resources to reintroduce organic matter into soils used for agriculture and to reduce the water footprint of intensive agricultural food system. While the circular economy is a virtuous exercise, it cannot be excluded that the adoption of such a practice can introduce vulnerabilities in the food chain, by exposing crops to zoonotic agents and antimicrobial resistance determinants. This option is far from being a speculation and evidence start to accumulate indicating that the risk is tangible. In this work we add further evidence that the circular economy practices of reusing biomass and reclaimed waters in agricultural setting may be vectors for the spreading of antimicrobial resistance genes targeting molecules used to treat human bacterial infections and demonstrate that such genes, identified through metagenomics screening of these samples, are present into live bacterial organisms, harbouring multi drug resistance genes clusters. Moreover, we observed that most of the antibiotic-resistant bacteria identified belonged to species with an environmental diffusion, which were not supposed to be exposed to the antimicrobials, suggesting that inter-specie transfer occurred.

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Determination and Ecological Risk Assessment of Quinolone Antibiotics in Drinking and Environmental Waters Using Fully Automated Disk-Based SPE Coupled with UPLC–MS/MS

Hu,

Da,

et al. 2024

Molecules

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Quinolone antibiotics (QNs) contamination in the aquatic environment is a global public health issue considering their resistance and mobility. In this study, a simple, efficient, and sensitive method was developed for the accurate quantification of fifteen QNs in water using automated disk-based solid-phase extraction (SPE) coupled with ultra-performance liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC–MS/MS). By utilizing a 3M SDB-XC disk to enrich QNs from a 1000 mL water sample, the detection limits were improved to 0.008–0.055 ng/L due to the satisfactory enrichment factors of 897−1136, but only requiring about 60 min per six samples. The linearity of the method ranged from 0.05 to 100 μg/L for the 15 QNs, with correlation coefficients of 0.9992–0.9999, and the recoveries were in the range of 81–114%, with relative standard deviations of 0.2–13.3% (n = 6). The developed method was applicable for the quantification of trace QNs at low ng/L levels in drinking and environmental waters. The results showed that no QNs were detected in tap water, while three and four QNs were detected in the river water of Zhoushan and the seawater of Daiquyang and Yueqing Bay, East China, respectively, with a total concentration of 1.600–8.511 ng/L and 1.651–16.421 ng/L, respectively. Among the detected QNs, ofloxacin (OFL) was the predominant compound in river water, while enrofloxacin (ENR) was predominant in seawater. The risk quotient (RQ) results revealed that QNs posed a low risk to crustaceans and fish, but a low-to-medium risk to algae, and OFL presented the main ecological risk factor in river water, while ENR and CIP in seawater. Overall, the proposed automated disk-based SPE–UPLC–MS/MS method is highly efficient and sensitive, making it suitable for routine analysis of QNs in drinking and environmental waters.

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Understanding associations between antimicrobial agents usage and antimicrobial resistance genes prevalence at the community level using wastewater-based epidemiology: A Spanish pilot study

Cited by 4 publications

References 37 publications

Effect of anaerobic digestion on pathogens and antimicrobial resistance in the sewage sludge

Effect of anaerobic digestion on pathogens and antimicrobial resistance in the sewage sludge

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Determination and Ecological Risk Assessment of Quinolone Antibiotics in Drinking and Environmental Waters Using Fully Automated Disk-Based SPE Coupled with UPLC–MS/MS

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