AMR threat found in urban beaches

A team at University of Technology in Sydney monitored two of the city’s beaches weekly over two years. They found large increases in the abundance of ABR-causing genes within coastal seawater immediately after rainfall, and in some cases one to two weeks following rainfall.

Lead researcher Professor Justin Seymour said: “This research highlights the potential risk for significant levels of human exposure to antibiotic resistant bacteria within coastal beaches that are subject to urban run-off, but the health implications of this exposure are as yet undefined.

“This is a global issue that will impact any urbanised coastal region, and highlights the often overlooked environmental consequences of high levels of antibiotic use by human populations.”

The UTS team targeted 31 ABR genes that provide bacteria with resistance to front-line antibiotics and found up to 100-fold increases in their abundance. This included genes that give resistance to quinolone, trimethoprim, sulfonamide, tetracycline, vancomycin and carbapenem antibiotic groups.

They also found that an abundance of ABR genes strongly correlated with several potentially pathogenic bacterial OTUs regularly associated with wastewater infrastructure, such as Arcobacter, Acinetobacter, Aeromonas and Cloacibacterium.

From this, they concluded that sewage and waste infrastructure such as pipes are potential reservoirs for the spread of ABR into coastal waters during storm-water discharge and sewer overflow – highlighting a potentially significant ARB exposure risk to humans in urban beaches.

UTS conducted their experiments at Foreshore Beach within Botany Bay and Maroubra Beach, southern Sydney. They had their results published in Water Research.

Also this week, hygienists at the University of Bonn published a study revealing that a washing machine in a children’s hospital had become a hotbed for Klebsiella oxytoca, an antibiotic-resistant pathogen that can lead to gastrointestinal and respiratory infections.