Antibiotic-resistant bacteria and antibiotic resistance gene (ARGs) loads dissipate through sewage treatment plants to receiving aquatic environments, but the mechanisms that mitigate the spread of these ARGs are not well understood due to the complexity of full-scale systems and the difficulty of source tracking in downstream environments. To overcome this problem, we targeted a controlled experimental system ...
The World Health Organization Global Action Plan recommends integrated surveillance programs as crucial strategies for monitoring antibiotic resistance. Although several national surveillance programs are in place for clinical and veterinary settings, no such schemes exist for monitoring antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the environment. In this transnational study, we developed, validated, and tested a low-cost...
Antibiotic resistant bacteria (ARB) and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) are widely distributed in the environment where they represent potential public health threats. Quantitative PCR (qPCR) is a suitable approach to detect and quantify ARGs in environmental samples. However, the comparison of gene quantification data between different laboratories is challenging since the data are predominantly obtained un...
The World Health Organization Global Action Plan recommends integrated surveillance programs as crucial strategies for monitoring antibiotic resistance. Although several national surveillance programs are in place for clinical and veterinary settings, no such schemes exist for monitoring antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the environment. In this transnational study, we developed, validated, and tested a low-cost...
There is increasing public concern regarding the fate of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) during wastewater treatment, their persistence during the treatment process and their potential impacts on the receiving water bodies. In this study, we used quantitative PCR (qPCR) to determine the abundance of nine ARGs and a class 1 integron associated integrase gene in 16 wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) effluents f...
Integrons are extensively targeted as a proxy for anthropogenic impact in the environment. We developed a novel high-throughput amplicon sequencing pipeline that enables characterization of thousands of integron gene cassette-associated reads, and applied it to acquire a comprehensive overview of gene cassette composition in effluents from wastewater treatment facilities across Europe. Between 38 100 and 172 99...
Antibiotic resistance is a threat to human and animal health worldwide, and key measures are required to reduce the risks posed by antibiotic resistance genes that occur in the environment. These measures include the identification of critical points of control, the development of reliable surveillance and risk assessment procedures, and the implementation of technological solutions that can prevent environment...