URBAN SEWAGE A POSSIBLE SOURCE OF ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE

Global emergence of antimicrobial resistance threatens therapies that combat infections by bacterial pathogens. Resistance genes detected in city sewage may serve as a proxy for the resistance burden of their urban populations. Professor Zhu Yongguan from the Institute of Urban Environment of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and his collaborators recently conducted a nationwide survey of antimicrobial resistance elements in China’s urban sewage and showed that the distribution of antimicrobial-resistant genes (ARG) was characterized by the well-known “Hu Huanyong line,” which delineates a striking difference in the distribution of China’s population. This demonstrated that the emergence of ARGs is driven by human activity.