Environmental Pathway of Antibiotic Resistance: Where Will It Lead Us?.

Antibiotic resistance is a serious human health challenge and the World Health Organization has called for a global strategy for its containment.  A growing body of research suggests that environmental sources and pathways may represent a significant contribution to antibiotic resistant infections in humans.  However, precisely quantifying contributions of environmental sources of antibiotic resistance to human disease is challenging.  The South Platte River Basin in Colorado offers an ideal model watershed for discerning the impacts of wastewater treatment plant and animal feeding operation sources of resistance to the water environment.  Recent mapping of the watershed by researchers at Colorado State University and Virginia Tech has revealed a strong correlation between the levels of antibiotic resistance genes in river sediments and upstream capacities of wastewater treatment plants and animal feeding operations.  While this finding confirms without a doubt that human activities impact levels of antibiotic resistance in water bodies, what is the next step?  The implications and potential paths forward, including on-farm management and advanced water treatment, will be discussed.