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Antibiotics may increase triazine herbicide exposure risk via disturbing gut microbiota.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:Antibiotics are commonly used worldwide, and pesticide is a kind of xenobiotic to which humans are frequently exposed. The interactive impact of antibiotics on pesticides has rarely been studied. We aim to investigate the effects of antibiotics on the pesticide exposure risk and whether gut microbiota altered by antibiotics has an influence on pesticide bioavailability. Furthermore, we explored the mechanisms of gut microbiota affecting the fate of pesticides in the host. RESULTS:The oral bioavailability of triazine herbicides significantly increased in the rats treated with ampicillin or antibiotic cocktails. The antibiotic-altered gut microbiota directly influenced the increased pesticide bioavailability through downregulating hepatic metabolic enzyme gene expression and upregulating intestinal absorption-related proteins. CONCLUSIONS:Antibiotics could increase the pesticide bioavailability and thereby may increase the pesticide exposure risk. The antibiotic-altered gut microbiota that could alter the hepatic metabolic enzyme gene expression and intestinal absorption-related proteome was a critical cause of the increased bioavailability. This study revealed an undiscovered potential health impact of antibiotics and reminded people to consider the co-exposed xenobiotics when taking antibiotics.

SUBMITTER: Zhan J

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6291969 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Antibiotics may increase triazine herbicide exposure risk via disturbing gut microbiota.

Zhan Jing J Liang Yiran Y Liu Donghui D Ma Xiaoran X Li Peize P Liu Chang C Liu Xueke X Wang Peng P Zhou Zhiqiang Z

Microbiome 20181213 1

<h4>Background</h4>Antibiotics are commonly used worldwide, and pesticide is a kind of xenobiotic to which humans are frequently exposed. The interactive impact of antibiotics on pesticides has rarely been studied. We aim to investigate the effects of antibiotics on the pesticide exposure risk and whether gut microbiota altered by antibiotics has an influence on pesticide bioavailability. Furthermore, we explored the mechanisms of gut microbiota affecting the fate of pesticides in the host.<h4>R ...[more]

PMID: 30545405

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Project description:Environmental stressors, such as pollutants, can increase disease risk in wildlife. For example, the herbicide atrazine affects host defences (e.g. resistance and tolerance) of the amphibian chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), but the mechanisms for these associations are not entirely clear. Given that pollutants can alter the gut microbiota of hosts, which in turn can affect their health and immune systems, one potential mechanism by which pollutants could increase infection risk is by influencing host-associated microbiota. Here, we test whether early-life exposure to the estimated environmental concentration (EEC; 200 μg/L) of atrazine affects the gut bacterial composition of Cuban tree frog (Osteopilus septentrionalis) tadpoles and adults and whether any atrazine-induced change in community composition might affect host defences against Bd. We also determine whether early-life changes in the stress hormone corticosterone affect gut microbiota by experimentally inhibiting corticosterone synthesis with metyrapone. With the exception of changing the relative abundances of two bacterial genera in adulthood, atrazine did not affect gut bacterial diversity or community composition of tadpoles (in vivo or in vitro) or adults. Metyrapone did not significantly affect bacterial diversity of tadpoles, but significantly increased bacterial diversity of adults. Gut bacterial diversity during Bd exposure did not predict host tolerance or resistance to Bd intensity in tadpoles or adults. However, early-life bacterial diversity negatively predicted Bd intensity as adult frogs. Specifically, Bd intensity as adults was associated negatively with the relative abundance of phylum Fusobacteria in the guts of tadpoles. Our results suggest that the effect of atrazine on Bd infection risk is not mediated by host-associated microbiota because atrazine does not affect microbiota of tadpoles or adults. However, host-associated microbes seem important in host resistance to Bd because the early-life microbiota, during immune system development, predicted later-life infection risk with Bd. Overall, our study suggests that increasing gut bacterial diversity and relative abundances of Fusobacteria might have lasting positive effects on amphibian health.

Project description:Honey bees are important agricultural pollinators that rely on a specific gut microbiota for the regulation of their immune system and defense against pathogens. Environmental stressors that affect the bee gut microbial community, such as antibiotics and glyphosate, can indirectly compromise bee health. Most of the experiments demonstrating these effects have been done under laboratory conditions with pure chemicals. Here, we investigated the oral and topical effects of various concentrations of glyphosate in a herbicide formulation on the honey bee gut microbiota and health under laboratory and field conditions. Under all of these conditions, the formulation, dissolved in sucrose syrup or water, affected the abundance of beneficial bacteria in the bee gut in a dose-dependent way. Mark-recapture experiments also demonstrated that bees exposed to the formulation were more likely to disappear from the colony, once reintroduced after exposure. Although no visible effects were observed for hives exposed to the formulation in field experiments, challenge trials with the pathogen Serratia marcescens, performed under laboratory conditions, revealed that bees from hives exposed to the formulation exhibited increased mortality compared with bees from control hives. In the field experiments, glyphosate was detected in honey collected from exposed hives, showing that worker bees transfer xenobiotics to the hive, thereby extending exposure and increasing the chances of exposure to recently emerged bees. These findings show that different routes of exposure to glyphosate-based herbicide can affect honey bees and their gut microbiota.IMPORTANCE The honey bee gut microbial community plays a vital role in immune response and defense against opportunistic pathogens. Environmental stressors, such as the herbicide glyphosate, may affect the gut microbiota, with negative consequences for bee health. Glyphosate is usually sprayed in the field mixed with adjuvants, which enhance herbicidal activity. These adjuvants may also enhance undesired effects in nontargeted organisms. This seems to be the case for glyphosate-based herbicide on honey bees. As we show in this study, oral exposure to either pure glyphosate or glyphosate in a commercial herbicide formulation perturbs the gut microbiota of honey bees, and topical exposure to the formulation also has a direct effect on honey bee health, increasing mortality in a dose-dependent way and leaving surviving bees with a perturbed microbiota. Understanding the effects of herbicide formulations on honey bees may help to protect these important agricultural pollinators.

Project description:Antibiotic treatment can impact nontarget microbes, enriching the pool of resistance genes available to pathogens and altering community profiles of microbes beneficial to hosts. The gut microbiota of adult honeybees, a distinctive community dominated by eight bacterial species, provides an opportunity to examine evolutionary responses to long-term treatment with a single antibiotic. For decades, American beekeepers have routinely treated colonies with oxytetracycline for control of larval pathogens. Using a functional metagenomic screen of bacteria from Maryland bees, we detected a high incidence of tetracycline/oxytetracycline resistance. This resistance is attributable to known resistance loci for which nucleotide sequences and flanking mobility genes were nearly identical to those from human pathogens and from bacteria associated with farm animals. Surveys using diagnostic PCR and sequencing revealed that gut bacteria of honeybees from diverse localities in the United States harbor eight tetracycline resistance loci, including efflux pump genes (tetB, tetC, tetD, tetH, tetL, and tetY) and ribosome protection genes (tetM and tetW), often at high frequencies. Isolates of gut bacteria from Connecticut bees display high levels of tetracycline resistance. Resistance genes were ubiquitous in American samples, though rare in colonies unexposed for 25 years. In contrast, only three resistance loci, at low frequencies, occurred in samples from countries not using antibiotics in beekeeping and samples from wild bumblebees. Thus, long-term antibiotic treatment has caused the bee gut microbiota to accumulate resistance genes, drawn from a widespread pool of highly mobile loci characterized from pathogens and agricultural sites. We found that 50 years of using antibiotics in beekeeping in the United States has resulted in extensive tetracycline resistance in the gut microbiota. These bacteria, which form a distinctive community present in healthy honeybees worldwide, may function in protecting bees from disease and in providing nutrition. In countries that do not use antibiotics in beekeeping, bee gut bacteria contained far fewer resistance genes. The tetracycline resistance that we observed in American samples reflects the capture of mobile resistance genes closely related to those known from human pathogens and agricultural sites. Thus, long-term treatment to control a specific pathogen resulted in the accumulation of a stockpile of resistance capabilities in the microbiota of a healthy gut. This stockpile can, in turn, provide a source of resistance genes for pathogens themselves. The use of novel antibiotics in beekeeping may disrupt bee health, adding to the threats faced by these pollinators.

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Antibiotics may increase triazine herbicide exposure risk via disturbing gut microbiota.

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Antibiotics may increase triazine herbicide exposure risk via disturbing gut microbiota.

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