Influence of Tetracycline on Antibiotic Resistant Genes Occurrence in Farming Soils
Abstract
The spread of multidrug resistant bacteria is now one of the greatest threats to human health. The environmental selection pressure and dissemination of antibiotic-resistant genes (ARG) may affect the development and spread of resistant infections, and consequently the use of any antibiotic therapy against infectious diseases becomes difficult or sometimes impossible.
Research studies worldwide provide evidence that high quantities of antibiotics use in soil farming environments contributes largely to development of rich reservoirs of ARG. These reservoirs of resistance pose a human health risk from exposure to soils that carry ARG given that pathogens may acquire resistance via horizontal gene transfer or other mechanisms. Populations at high risk of exposure are farm workers and farming communities given that they could be exposed to high concentration of ARG, and the duration of exposure might be relatively long due to residential proximity to farming facilities. To assess human health risk of exposure to ARG in soils, a quantifiable description of susceptible and resistant soil bacterial population dynamics is required. Therefore, we conducted experimental studies, where a specific antibiotic (tetracycline) was introduced to representative farming soils and temporal data of changes in the soil's ARG were collected. Our overall objective is to identify soil-antibiotic conditions that trigger the enrichment of ARG in soils and how persistent those conditions could be in farming environments.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFM.H21M1862M
- Keywords:
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- 0409 Bioavailability: chemical speciation and complexation;
- BIOGEOSCIENCESDE: 1832 Groundwater transport;
- HYDROLOGYDE: 1865 Soils;
- HYDROLOGYDE: 1871 Surface water quality;
- HYDROLOGY