A new study in PLOS Pathogens finds that, in rural Bangladesh, areas with high levels of arsenic contamination in drinking water have a higher prevalence of antibiotic-resistant E. Coli in both water and child stool samples.
Antibiotic resistance is one of the leading causes of death and hospitalization worldwide. While the major drivers of antibiotic resistance are the overuse and misuse of antibiotics, natural elements such as heavy metals can also promote antibiotic resistance.
In the new study, researchers collected water and stool samples from both mothers and young children of 100 families in two rural subdistricts in Bangladesh. Families in the Hajiganj subdistrict use drinking water from shallow tube wells, which have a high concentration of arsenic, while Matlab families collect their drinking water from arsenic-free deep tube wells.
The median arsenic concentration in the 50 water samples from Hajiganj was 481 μg/L while the median arsenic concentration in the 50 water samples from Matlab was 0 μg/L.
Overall, 84 percent of all water and stool samples across both sites were found to be positive for E. coli. However, the prevalence of antibiotic resistant E. coli was significantly higher in the water in Hajiganj (48 percent) compared to the water in Matlab (22 percent) and among children in Hajiganj (94 percent) compared to children in Matlab (76 percent), but not among mothers.
Moreover, a higher proportion of E. coli from Hajiganj were resistant to multiple antibiotics, including penicillin, cephalosporin, and chloramphenicol.
“Heavy metals such as arsenic are more stable than antibiotics in the environment, and they continue to exert selective pressure on bacteria over a more extended period driving the evolution and expansion of antimicrobial resistance in the community,” says Mohammad Aminul Islam of Washington State University, one of the study’s authors. “The extent to which this phenomenon drives the observed higher rates of antimicrobial resistance, as opposed to other confounders, would benefit from further study; nevertheless, it is critical to contain this environmental driver of antimicrobial resistance along with responsible antimicrobial usage in medicine and agriculture.”
