scholarly journals Antibiotic resistance in European wastewater treatment plants mirrors the pattern of clinical antibiotic resistance prevalence

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. eaau9124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katariina M. M. Pärnänen ◽  
Carlos Narciso-da-Rocha ◽  
David Kneis ◽  
Thomas U. Berendonk ◽  
Damiano Cacace ◽  
...  

Integrated antibiotic resistance (AR) surveillance is one of the objectives of the World Health Organization global action plan on antimicrobial resistance. Urban wastewater treatment plants (UWTPs) are among the most important receptors and sources of environmental AR. On the basis of the consistent observation of an increasing north-to-south clinical AR prevalence in Europe, this study compared the influent and final effluent of 12 UWTPs located in seven countries (Portugal, Spain, Ireland, Cyprus, Germany, Finland, and Norway). Using highly parallel quantitative polymerase chain reaction, we analyzed 229 resistance genes and 25 mobile genetic elements. This first trans-Europe surveillance showed that UWTP AR profiles mirror the AR gradient observed in clinics. Antibiotic use, environmental temperature, and UWTP size were important factors related with resistance persistence and spread in the environment. These results highlight the need to implement regular surveillance and control measures, which may need to be appropriate for the geographic regions.

2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (S3) ◽  
pp. 68-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Asha Behdinan ◽  
Steven J. Hoffman ◽  
Mark Pearcey

This article assesses which policies for addressing antibiotic resistance (ABR) as part of a multi-pronged approach would benefit from legalization through an international legal agreement. Ten candidate policies were identified based on a review of existing literature, especially The Lancet Series on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR), The Lancet Infectious Diseases Commission on AMR, and the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Action Plan for AMR. These policies were then grouped under the headings of access, conservation, and innovation.Each of the ten policies were assessed using four criteria developed by Hoffman, Røttingen, and Frenk to help consider why their legalization may be helpful, necessary and/or justified. These criteria are: (1) the problem has a significant transnational dimension; (2) the goal justifies the coercive nature of law; (3) the outcome is likely to be beneficial; and (4) legalization represents the best commitment mechanism among competing alternatives.


Author(s):  
Calvin W. L. Ho ◽  
Tsung-Ling Lee

Abstract Recognizing that antimicrobial resistance (AMR) poses a serious threat to global public health, the World Health Organization (WHO) has adopted a Global Action Plan (GAP) at the May 2015 World Health Assembly. Underscoring that systematic misuse and overuse of drugs in human medicine and food production is a global public health concern, the GAP-AMR urges concerted efforts across governments and private sectors, including pharmaceutical industry, medical professionals, agricultural industry, among others. The GAP has a threefold aim: (1) to ensure a continuous use of effective and safe medicines for treatment and prevention of infectious diseases; (2) to encourage a responsible use of medicines; and (3) to engage countries to develop their national actions on AMR in keeping with the recommendations. While the GAP is a necessary step to enable multilateral actions, it must be supported by effective governance in order to realize the proposed aims. This chapter has a threefold purpose: (1) To identify regulatory principles embedded in key WHO documents relating to AMR and the GAP-AMR; (2) To consider the legal and regulatory actions or interventions that countries could use to strengthen their regulatory lever for AMR containment; and (3) To highlight the crucial role of the regulatory lever in enabling other levers under a whole-of-system approach. Effective AMR containment requires a clearer understanding of how the regulatory lever could be implemented or enabled within health systems, as well as how it underscores and interacts with other levers within a whole-of-system approach.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuko Okemoto-Nakamura ◽  
Kenji Someya ◽  
Toshiyuki Yamaji ◽  
Kyoko Saito ◽  
Makoto Takeda ◽  
...  

AbstractPolio or poliomyelitis is a disabling and life-threatening disease caused by poliovirus (PV). As a consequence of global polio vaccination efforts, wild PV serotype 2 has been eradicated, and wild PV serotypes 1- and 3-transmitted cases have been largely eliminated except for in limited regions around the world. However, vaccine-derived PV, pathogenically reverted live PV vaccine strains in vaccinated humans, has become a serious issue. For the global eradication of polio, the World Health Organization is conducting the third edition of the Global Action Plan, which is requesting stringent control of potentially PV-infected materials. To facilitate the mission, we generated a PV-nonsusceptible Vero cell subline, which may serve as an ideal replacement of standard Vero cells to isolate emerging/re-emerging viruses without the risk of generating PV-infected materials.


Author(s):  
Valentin Duvauchelle ◽  
Elsa Causse ◽  
Julien Michon ◽  
Patrick Rateau ◽  
Karine Weiss ◽  
...  

In response to the antimicrobial resistance issue, the World Health Organization developed and conducted a survey in 2015 dealing with habits, antibiotic use, awareness of appropriate use and sensitization to the issue of antibacterial resistance. In France, we conducted a similar survey to investigate the use of antibiotics and students’ perceptions of the antibiotic resistance risk. Our results indicated that antibiotics are moderately taken (42% in the last six months), but mistakes remain in appropriate practices and knowledge. Many people still believe that the body develops resistance to antibiotics and 24% responded that antibiotics can be stopped before the end of the treatment if they feel better. Furthermore, only 14% said antibiotics could be used to treat gonorrhea while 57% indicated that influenza could be treated with antibiotics. We looked at risk perception as well, and noticed that students in biology were more aware of risk (mean score = 48.87) and health consequences (mean score = 40.33) than mathematics students (mean score = 44.11 and 37.44). They were more aware of the threat, had a better understanding of antibiotic resistance and their denial of this risk was less significant (mean score = 27.04 against 23.81). However, the importance of providing a minimum level of knowledge to young students has been emphasized, regardless of the field of expertise.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna-Leena Lohiniva ◽  
Iman Heweidy ◽  
Samiha Abdu ◽  
Abouelata Omar ◽  
Caroline Ackley ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is increasingly pervasive due to multiple, complex prescribing and consuming behaviours. Accordingly, behaviour change is an important component of response to AMR. Little is known about the best approaches to change antibiotic use practices and behaviours. Aim: This project aims to develop a context-specific behaviour change strategy focusing on promoting appropriate prescription practices following the World Health Organization recommendations for surgical prophylaxis. in an orthopaedic surgery unit in Egypt. Methods: The project included a formative qualitative research study was based on the Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF) and an intervention that was developed to following the Behaviour Change Wheel (BCW) in a knowledge co-production workshop that ensured that the theory based intervention was a culturally acceptable, practical and implementable intervention. Results: The prescription of surgical prophylaxis was influenced by five TDF domains including, knowledge, belief in consequences (mistrust towards infection prevention and control measures), environmental factors (lack of prescription guidelines) , professional role and reinforcement (a lack of appropriate follow up actions influenced prescription of surgical prophylaxis). The appropriate set of behaviour change functions of BCW and related activities to improve the current practices included education, enablement, persuasion, environmental restructuring and restriction. Conclusions: The study showed that a theory based and context specific intervention can be created by using the TDF and BCW together with knowledge-co creation to improve the prescription of surgical prophylaxis in and Egyptian orthopaedic unit. The intervention need to piloted and scaled up.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Lara-Jacobo ◽  
Golam Islam ◽  
Jean-Paul Desaulniers ◽  
Andrea Kirkwood ◽  
Denina Simmons

Abstract On March 12, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 as a global pandemic. COVID-19 is produced by a novel β-coronavirus known as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) [1]. Several studies have detected SARS-CoV-2 RNA in urine, feces, and other biofluids from both symptomatic and asymptomatic people with COVID-19 [2], suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 RNA could be detected in human wastewater [3]. Thus, wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) is now used as an approach to monitor COVID-19 prevalence in many different places around the world [4-10] . Reverse transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) is the most common SARS-CoV-2 detection method in WBE, but there are other methods for viral biomolecule detection that could work as well. The aim of this study was to evaluate the presence of SARS-CoV-2 proteins in untreated wastewater (WW) influents collected from six wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), from Durham Region, Ontario, Canada, using a LC-MS/MS-based proteomics approach. We identified many SARS-CoV-2 proteins in these wastewater samples, with peptides from pp1ab being the most consistently detected and with consistent abundance.


Praxis ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 107 (17-18) ◽  
pp. 943-949 ◽  
Author(s):  
Boris Gojanovic

Abstract. Physical activity provides huge opportunities for the health of nations. Understanding this, the World Health Organization has published a Global Action Plan which aims to provide member states with a framework for action, namely to create active societies, people, environments and systems. The target is set at a 15 % reduction in physical inactivity levels by 2030. We explore in this paper some of the challenges and opportunities that come with it, and give the practitioner some real-world opportunities for relevant action at the local level, as well as for their patients, staying true to the Physician’s Pledge (Declaration of Geneva): “I will attend to my own health, well-being, and abilities in order to provide care of the highest standard.”


2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (Supplement_5) ◽  
Author(s):  
S Bonetta ◽  
C Pignata ◽  
S a Bonetta ◽  
E Gasparro ◽  
E Lorenzi ◽  
...  

Abstract The global action plan on antimicrobial resistance reports the necessity to develop standards and guidance for the presence of antimicrobial agents in the environment, especially in wastewater, highlighting its possible role in the antibiotic resistance spreading. In addition, the New European One Health Action Plan against Antimicrobial Resistance underlines the need to support research into knowledge gaps on the release of resistant microorganisms into the environment and their dissemination. The aim of this study was to evaluate the presence of Antibiotic Resistance Bacteria (ARB) and Antibiotic Resistance Genes (ARG) in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). At this scope, untreated sewage and treated effluents of three different WWTPs (A, B and C) were sampled for one year. Sample dilutions were plated on R2Agar added/not-added with 4 different antibiotics (ampicillin 32mg/L; tetracycline 16 mg/L; chloramphenicol 32 mg/L; sulfamethoxazole 50,4 mg/L) to evaluate the percentage of antibiotic resistant bacteria and their WWTPs removal rate (%). DNA extraction on the filter used to concentrate the wastewater samples was performed to reveal the ARG presence; subsequently specific PCRs for ARG (blaTEM, tetA, sul II, sul III) were carried out. ARB were detected in all samples analysed. The highest antibiotic resistance percentage was revealed in the sewage (mean 21,7%±4,8) and effluent (mean 21,1%±3,0) of the three wastewater treatment plants for sulfamethoxazole. Moreover, sul II was the most present gene in the samples (81% of all samples, 89 % of sewages and 72% of effluents). The lower WWTPs removal was recovered in the plant B for the tetracycline (95, 7%). The results obtained underlines the need to monitor WWTP as critical hot spot for the antibiotic resistance spreading also considering the One Health approach. Furthermore, the results obtained could suggest interventions to reduce the spread of the antibiotic resistance in the integrated urban water cycle. Key messages The information obtained could provide usefulness information about the role of wastewater treatment plant in the antibiotic resistance spreading. The results could contribute to suggest the interventions targeted to reduce the antibiotic resistance phenomenon in the integrated urban water cycle.


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