How sewage plants birth resistant bacteria

At the always-excellent public health blog Effect Measure, there’s a fascinating dissection of a new paper still in press at the journal Science of the Total Environment. The paper unpacks what happens to Acinetobacter in effluent as they move through sewage treatment. Answer: Many are eliminated, but the ones that survive become significantly more resistant.

I am deep in the final book chapter, so blogging will be light for a week. In the meantime, I recommend this paper and the accompanying post for explicating a little-explored aspect of antibiotic resistance in the environment (which we also talked about in this earlier post.)

The cite is: Zhang, Y. et al. Wastewater treatment contributes to selective increase of antibiotic resistance among Acinetobacter spp. Sci Tot Env doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2009.02.013.

Back soon.

Maryn

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