Dataset Information

'Disperse abroad in the land': the role of wildlife in the dissemination of antimicrobial resistance.

ABSTRACT: Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has been detected in the microbiota of many wildlife species, including long-distance migrants. Inadequately treated wastes from humans and livestock dosed with antimicrobial drugs are often assumed to be the main sources of AMR to wildlife. While wildlife populations closely associated with human populations are more likely to harbour clinically important AMR related to that found in local humans and livestock, AMR is still common in remote wildlife populations with little direct human influence. Most reports of AMR in wildlife are survey based and/or small scale, so researchers can only speculate on possible sources and sinks of AMR or the impact of wildlife AMR on clinical resistance. This lack of quantitative data on the flow of AMR genes and AMR bacteria across the natural environment could reflect the numerous AMR sources and amplifiers in the populated world. Ecosystems with relatively simple and well-characterized potential inputs of AMR can provide tractable, but realistic, systems for studying AMR in the natural environment. New tools, such as animal tracking technologies and high-throughput sequencing of resistance genes and mobilomes, should be integrated with existing methodologies to understand how wildlife maintains and disperses AMR.

SUBMITTER: Arnold KE

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5014016 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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'Disperse abroad in the land': the role of wildlife in the dissemination of antimicrobial resistance.

Arnold Kathryn E KE Williams Nicola J NJ Bennett Malcolm M Bennett Malcolm M

Biology letters 20160801 8

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has been detected in the microbiota of many wildlife species, including long-distance migrants. Inadequately treated wastes from humans and livestock dosed with antimicrobial drugs are often assumed to be the main sources of AMR to wildlife. While wildlife populations closely associated with human populations are more likely to harbour clinically important AMR related to that found in local humans and livestock, AMR is still common in remote wildlife populations wi ...[more]

PMID: 27531155

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Project description:Injured and orphaned wildlife are often brought to Wildlife Rehabilitation Centers (WRC) to be cared for by professionals to ultimately be released back to their natural habitats. In these centers, animals may spend months and frequently receive prolonged antibiotic therapy. Therefore, WRC may play a role in the emergence and dissemination of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). The goal of this study was to investigate the presence and antibiotic resistance profiles of Gram-negative bacteria with reduced susceptibility to cephalosporins in both the wildlife admitted to a WRC and in the WRC built environment in Chile. A cross-sectional study was conducted sampling animals undergoing rehabilitation (n = 64) and the WRC environment (n = 160). Isolated bacterial species were identified with MALDI-TOF, and antimicrobial susceptibility determined using the disk diffusion method. Enterobacteriaceae and Pseudomonadaceae were the dominant bacterial families among the environmental (n = 78) and animal (n = 31) isolates. For Enterobacteriaceae, isolates of the most abundant species (E. coli) were classified into 20 antibiotic resistance profiles, with eight of those isolates being resistant to more than nine antibiotics, including imipenem. Isolates of the Pseudomonadaceae family identified 11 isolates with resistance to antibiotics such as carbapenems and quinolones. Even though a cluster analysis based on antibiotic resistance patterns did not show a clear overlap between environmental and animal isolates, it is important to highlight the identification of isolates resistant to carbapenems, which is very relevant from a public health perspective. Further, numerous antibiotic resistance profiles were observed in different bacterial species, indicating not only environmental contamination with a wide diversity of bacteria, but also a wide diversity of resistant bacteria in animals at the WRC. The approach taken by sampling animals and their hospital environment can be useful in understanding AMR dynamics in wildlife rehabilitation settings, as well as the potential dissemination of AMR into the natural environment.

Project description:BackgroundAntimicrobial resistance is one of the great challenges facing global health security in the modern era. Wildlife, particularly those that use urban environments, are an important but understudied component of epidemiology of antimicrobial resistance. We investigated antimicrobial resistance overlap between sympatric wildlife, humans, livestock, and their shared environment across the developing city of Nairobi, Kenya. We use these data to examine the role of urban wildlife in the spread of clinically relevant antimicrobial resistance.Methods99 households across Nairobi were randomly selected on the basis of socioeconomic stratification. A detailed survey was administered to household occupants, and samples (n=2102) were collected from the faeces of 75 wildlife species inhabiting household compounds (ie, the household and its perimeter; n=849), 13 livestock species (n=656), and humans (n=333), and from the external environment (n=288). Escherichia coli, our sentinel organism, was cultured and a single isolate from each sample tested for sensitivity to 13 antibiotics. Diversity of antimicrobial resistant phenotypes was compared between urban wildlife, humans, livestock, and the environment, to investigate whether wildlife are a net source for antimicrobial resistance in Nairobi. Generalised linear mixed models were used to determine whether the prevalence of antimicrobial resistant phenotypes and multidrug-resistant E coli carriage in urban wildlife is linked to variation in ecological traits, such as foraging behaviour, and to determine household-level risk factors for sharing of antimicrobial resistance between humans, wildlife, and livestock.FindingsE coli were isolated from 485 samples collected from wildlife between Sept 6,2015, and Sept 28, 2016. Wildlife carried a low prevalence of E coli isolates susceptible to all antibiotics tested (45 [9%] of 485 samples) and a high prevalence of clinically relevant multidrug resistance (252 [52%] of 485 samples), which varied between taxa and by foraging traits. Multiple isolates were resistant to one agent from at least seven antimicrobial classes tested for, and a single isolate was resistant to all antibiotics tested for in the study. The phenotypic diversity of antimicrobial-resistant E coli in wildlife was lower than in livestock, humans, and the environment. Within household compounds, statistical models identified two interfaces for exchange of antimicrobial resistance: between both rodents, humans and their rubbish, and seed-eating birds, humans and their rubbish; and between seed-eating birds, cattle, and bovine manure.InterpretationUrban wildlife carry a high burden of clinically relevant antimicrobial-resistant E coli in Nairobi, exhibiting resistance to drugs considered crucial for human medicine by WHO. Identifiable traits of the wildlife contribute to this exposure; however, compared with humans, livestock, and the environment, low phenotypic diversity in wildlife is consistent with the hypothesis that wildlife are a net sink rather than source of clinically relevant resistance. Wildlife that interact closely with humans, livestock, and both human and livestock waste within households, are exposed to more antimicrobial resistant phenotypes, and could therefore act as conduits for the dissemination of clinically relevant antimicrobial resistance to the wider environment. These results provide novel insight into the broader epidemiology of antimicrobial resistance in complex urban environments, characteristic of lower-middle-income countries.FundingUK Medical Research Council and CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health.

Project description:Integrons are hot spots for acquiring gene cassettes from the environment and play a major role in the bacterial evolution and dissemination of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), thus posing a serious threat. There are currently studies on integrons and antibiotic resistance genes; however, the presence and association of integrons in different agricultural crops and their subsequent dissemination and role in AMR have not been reported previously. This study examines the abundance of integrons, their gene cassette diversity in various crop soils, and their role in the dissemination of AMR in the southern region of China. Samples from different agri-crop soil, such as rice (R.S), sugarcane (S.S), citrus (C.S), banana (B.S), agricultural runoff (the point where the runoff of all sites meet (R.O)), and wild (non-agricultural) soil (W.S), were collected. Quantitative PCR was used to determine the abundance of integrons, and clone libraries were constructed to examine the gene cassette arrays. All the tested samples were found positive for Class-I (CL1) integrons and revealed a higher concentration and higher relative abundance of R.S than the others, with the least found at the W.S site. The W.S CL1 cassette arrays were found empty, and no putative conserved domains were found. The R.O was found to contain a high number of gene cassettes with various functions, while the smallest number of gene cassettes was found in the S.S among the crop soils. Most of the gene cassettes presented by the R.O were primarily shared with other sites, and the antibiotic-resistant genes were consistently observed to be dominant. The constructed clone libraries represented a diverse gene cassette array with 16% novel gene cassettes that play a vital role in pathogenesis, transportation, biosynthesis, and AMR. Most resistance-related gene cassettes were associated with the genes encoding resistance to quaternary ammonium compound (QAC) and aminoglycosides. This study highlights the significant differences in the abundance of integrons among various agricultural soils and offers deep insight into the pools of gene cassettes that play a key role in the dissemination of integrons and AMR.

Dataset Information

'Disperse abroad in the land': the role of wildlife in the dissemination of antimicrobial resistance.

Publications

'Disperse abroad in the land': the role of wildlife in the dissemination of antimicrobial resistance.

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