Urban wastewater treatment plants as hotspots for antibiotic resistant bacteria and genes spread into the environment: a review.

By L. Rizzo, C. Manaia, C. Merlin, T. Schwartz, Christophe Dagot, M. Ploy, I. Michael, D. Fatta-Kassinos. Science of the Total Environment, 2013

2,203 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Urban wastewater treatment plants (UWTPs) are among the main sources of antibiotics' release into the environment. The occurrence of antibiotics may promote the selection of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) and antibiotic resistant bacteria (ARB), which shade health risks to humans and animals. In this paper the fate of ARB and ARGs in UWTPs, focusing on different processes/technologies (i.e., biological processes, advanced treatment technologies and disinfection), was critically reviewed. The mechanisms by which biological processes influence the development/selection of ARB and ARGs transfer are still poorly understood. Advanced treatment technologies and disinfection process are regarded as a major tool to control the spread of ARB into the environment. In spite of intense efforts made over the last years to bring solutions to control antibiotic resistance spread in the environment, there are still important gaps to fill in. In particular, it is important to: (i) improve risk assessment studies in order to allow accurate estimates about the maximal abundance of ARB in UWTPs effluents that would not pose risks for human and environmental health; (ii) understand the factors and mechanisms that drive antibiotic resistance maintenance and selection in wastewater habitats. The final objective is to implement wastewater treatment technologies capable of assuring the production of UWTPs effluents with an acceptable level of ARB.

Subfields: Molecular Medicine, Pharmacology, Pollution

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b1a5b2b26e9e45f62b77aec6dea3a66097688f10

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Citations in the corpus

Metagenomic analysis reveals wastewater treatment plants as hotspots of antibiotic resistance genes and mobile genetic elements. (2017, background): “…mechanism for acquired resistance is through horizontal gene 60 transfer of ARGs from the environment or from other bacteria, and the gene transfer is mediated by 61 MGEs such as plasmids, transposons, bacteriophages, ins rtion sequences and integrons (Stalder et 62 al., 2012; Rizzo et al., 2013).”
Environmental factors influencing the development and spread of antibiotic resistance (2017, neutral): “Sewagetreatment plants (STPs) provide an obvious setting that offers interaction opportunities for a range of different bacterial species, and also may present sufficient conditions for resistance selection (Rizzo et al. 2013).”
Adsorptive removal of antibiotics from water and wastewater: Progress and challenges. (2015, background): “As reviewed by Michael et al. (2013) and Rizzo et al. (2013), urban wastewater treatment plants are likely to be hotspots for the release of antibiotics and ARGs in the natural environment.”
Trends in Human Fecal Carriage of Extended-Spectrum β-Lactamases in the Community: Toward the Globalization of CTX-M (2013, background): “However, it has been shown that urban wastewater treatment plants are hot spots for antibiotic-resistant bacteria and genes spread into the environment (114).”
Antimicrobials and Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria: A Risk to the Environment and to Public Health (2020, background): “Recent reports also highlight the need to expand the list of emerging contaminants present in sediments with ARB and ARG and to eliminate them from both sediments and fertilized soils [2,98].”
Removal of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in various wastewater treatment processes: An overview (2020, background): “Although WWTPs play significant roles in removing and preventing the spread of ARGs and ARBs (Guo, Li, et al., 2017; Rizzo et al., 2013), they Figure 1.”
Nanostructured porous graphene for efficient removal of emerging contaminants (pharmaceuticals) from water (2020, background): “Pharmaceuticals are generally well characterised, and their impacts are assessed before commercialisation, so their negative effects are expected to result in the endocrine disruption in living organisms and development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and genes [1,7].”
Dissemination of Antimicrobial Resistance in Microbial Ecosystems through Horizontal Gene Transfer (2016, background): “An increasing number of such studies have revealed a huge number of previously unknown ARGs present in environments such as soil (Riesenfeld et al., 2004; D’Costa et al., 2006; Allen et al., 2009; Frontiers in Microbiology | www.frontiersin.org 2 February 2016 | Volume 7 | Article 173 Donato et…”