Effects of antibiotic interaction on antimicrobial resistance development in wastewater

While wastewater is understood to be a critically important reservoir of antimicrobial resistance due to the presence of multiple antibiotic residues from industrial and agricultural runoff, there is little known about the effects of antibiotic interactions in the wastewater on the development of resistance. We worked to fill this gap in quantitative understanding of antibiotic interaction in constant flow environments by experimentally monitoring E. coli populations under subinhibitory concentrations of combinations of antibiotics with synergistic, antagonistic, and additive interactions. We then used these results to expand our previously developed computational model to account for the effects of antibiotic interaction.

The results provide critical insight for quantitatively understanding the effects of antibiotic interactions in wastewater and provide a basis for future studies in modelling resistance in these environments.