Affiliation:
1. King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Water Desalination and Reuse Center (WDRC), Biological and Environmental Sciences & Engineering Division (BESE), Thuwal, Saudi Arabia
2. King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Bioscience Core Labs, Thuwal, Saudi Arabia
Abstract
ABSTRACT
The emergence of resistance to last-resort antibiotics is a public health concern of global scale. Besides direct person-to-person propagation, environmental pathways might contribute to the dissemination of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). Here, we describe the incidence of
bla
NDM-1
, a gene conferring resistance to carbapenems, in the wastewater of the city of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, over a 1-year period.
bla
NDM-1
was detected at concentrations ranging from 10
4
to 10
5
copies/m
3
of untreated wastewater during the entire monitoring period. These results indicate the ubiquity and high incidence of
bla
NDM-1
in the local wastewater. To track the bacteria carrying
bla
NDM-1
, we isolated
Escherichia coli
PI7, a strain of sequence type 101 (ST101), from wastewater around the Hajj event in October 2013. Genome sequencing of this strain revealed an extensive repertoire of ARGs as well as virulence and invasive traits. These traits were further confirmed by antibiotic resistance profiling and
in vitro
cell internalization in HeLa cell cultures. Given that this strain remains viable even after a certain duration in the sewerage, and that Jeddah lacks a robust sanitary infrastructure to fully capture all generated sewage, the presence of this bacterium in the untreated wastewater represents a potential hazard to the local public health. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of a
bla
NDM-1
-positive
E. coli
strain isolated from a nonnosocomial environment in Saudi Arabia and may set a priority concern for the need to establish improved surveillance for carbapenem-resistant
E. coli
in the country and nearby regions.
Publisher
American Society for Microbiology
Subject
Infectious Diseases,Pharmacology (medical),Pharmacology
Cited by
41 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献