Tracking down antibiotic resistance genes in hospitals

Hospitals can contain significant amounts of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, so it is critical that routine surveillance is performed to prevent outbreaks. In 2013, a study reported that in the United States, >2,000,000 illnesses are caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria each year and >23,000 deaths have been linked to these bacteria. Numerous publications have utilized the SmartChip Real-Time PCR System to track antibiotic resistance in hospital samples from various locations, including air conditioning filters, hospital wastewater, and treatment plants.

One recent study analyzed antibiotic resistance genes in air conditioning filters from hospitals, farms, cities (urban locations), and villages (rural locations) using the SmartChip system (Li, Y et al. 2019). By utilizing a 296-primer panel on the SmartChip system, the researchers were able to detect 177 antibiotic resistance genes across all their sample types. The highest numbers of antibiotic resistance genes were detected in hospital and farm samples (146 and 154 genes, respectively), as expected because antibiotics are more widely used in these locations. However, the type or class of antibiotic resistance genes identified were relatively similar across all sites, indicating that people working at hospitals and farms are likely to be bringing antibiotic-resistant bacteria back to the cities and villages.

Citations

Li, Y. et al. Prevalence of antibiotic resistance genes in air-conditioning systems in hospitals, farms, and residences. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 16, 683 (2019).

Pärnänen, K. M. M. et al. Antibiotic resistance in European wastewater treatment plants mirrors the pattern of clinical antibiotic resistance prevalence. Sci. Adv. 5, eaau9124 (2019).

Stedtfeld, R. D. et al. Antimicrobial resistance Dashboard application for mapping environmental occurrence and resistant pathogens. FEMS Microbiol. Ecol. 92, 1–9 (2016).

Wang, Q., Wang, P. & Yang, Q. Occurrence and diversity of antibiotic resistance in untreated hospital wastewater. Sci. Total Environ. 621, 990–999 (2018).

Waseem, H. et al. Contributions and challenges of high throughput qPCR for determining antimicrobial resistance in the environment: a critical review. Molecules 24, 163 (2019).

Zheng, H.-S., Guo, W.-Q., Wu, Q.-L., Ren, N.-Q. & Chang, J.-S. Electro-peroxone pretreatment for enhanced simulated hospital wastewater treatment and antibiotic resistance genes reduction. Environ. Int. 115, 70–78 (2018).

Zhou, Z.-C. et al. Prevalence and transmission of antibiotic resistance and microbiota between humans and water environments. Environ. Int. 121, 1155–1161 (2018).

Zhu, Y.-G. et al. Continental-scale pollution of estuaries with antibiotic resistance genes. Nat. Microbiol. 2, 16270 (2017).