Anissa Barrera

Dr, Leslie Bruce

California State University Fullerton

16 Oct 2019

Annotated Bibliography for Review of Antibiotic Resistance

Purpose:

Our team’s purpose is to review the latest research about antibiotic resistant

bacteria in wastewater and the potential impact on ecosystems and human health.

Introduction:

Antibiotic resistance is a growing public issue due to the availability of antibiotic

drugs that consumers take for granted. Although doctors must prescribe them, many

antibiotics are misused by consumers because of the lack of education surrounding

antibiotic use. Antibiotics only protect against bacterial, not viral infections (i.e.-common

cold, flu) which are often conflated. With the increase in antibiotic use, many bacteria

become resistant to the drugs and become ineffective against infections. Numerous

pharmaceutical companies who develop antibiotics also generate waste from creating

them. This waste then gets released into surrounding bodies of water creating antibiotic

resistant bacteria in new environments. Along with this contamination of water, human

wastewater becomes involved in this antibiotic resistant pool. With the increase in

recycled water for the planet’s health we are also recycling antibiotic resistant genes

found in waste water treatment plants, which gets recycled to us and the cycle

continues to spread and affect human health across the board.

Annotations:

Avalos, M., van Wezel, G.P., Raaijmakers, J.M., Garbeva, P. (2018). Healthy

scents: microbial volatiles as new frontier in antibiotic research?. Current Opinion in

Microbiology, 45, 84-91. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mib.2018.02.011.

 Avalos’s article redirects readers to a lesser-known method of combatting

antibiotic resistance through actinobacterial microbial volatile compounds

(MVC’s) which have shown properties of modulating resistance for use in drug

developments. (30)

 My team could use this source as some background into antibiotic resistance but

more so to explain how we can overcome it and potentially solve the issue. We

can use the descriptions of the compound’s beneficial properties and introduce

them to pharmaceutical companies during the drug development process to

produce more antibiotics. This source has some similarity to Choi’s article as far

as coming up with ways to lessen antibiotic resistance. The only difference was

this article investigated the solution in humans, while Choi’s investigated in a

manure environment.

Choi, J., Rieke, E. L., Moorman, T. B., Soupir, M. L., Allen, H. K., Smith, S. D., &

Howe, A. (2018). Practical implications of erythromycin resistance gene diversity on

surveillance and monitoring of resistance. FEMS microbiology ecology, 94(4), fiy006.

doi:10.1093/femsec/fiy006.
  Choi’s article investigates the erm antibiotic resistant gene along with primers

that can help detect the abundance of these genes, specifically in swine and

cattle manures. (27)

 Our team can use this source as a way of understanding how abundant antibiotic

resistant genes are. Analyzing the different figures in the paper can help us

quantify these numbers and their local and global impact their abundance has n

people. This is similar to Fang’s article because it talks about how diverse and

prevalent these genes are but in a different environment other than water.

Fang, T., Wang, H., Cui, Q., Rogers, M., Dong, P. (2018). Diversity of potential

antibiotic-resistant bacterial pathogens and the effect of suspended particles on the

spread of antibiotic resistance in urban recreational water. Water Research, 145, 541-

551. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2018.08.042.

 Fang’s article informs readers of the growing prevalence of antibiotic-resistant

bacterial pathogens (ARBP’s) in recreational waters which could have significant

biological impacts on human health. (26)

 Our team could use this source’s findings to understand the impacts that large,

communal recreational water areas could have on human health because they

are “sinks” of growing antibiotic resistance. This source has data and graphs

showing the rapid increase of AR in recreational waters that we could use to

drive the point that this is an increasing risk. However, as we have decided to

only stick with antibiotic resistance in wastewater, we most likely will not use it.

This source was similar to Choi’s article because they did use similar methods

involving qPCR.
 Zhang, C.M., Xu, L.M., Mou, X., Xu, H., Kiu, J., Miao, Y.H.,… Li, X. (2019).

Characterization and evolution of antibiotic resistance of Salmonella in municipal

wastewater treatment plants. Journal of Environmental Management, 251, 109547.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2019.109547.

 Zhang’s article investigated the levels of antibiotic resistance of various

Salmonella strains in wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) throughout different

parts of the treatment process. (24)

 Our team might use this source to comprehend the AR phenomenon in

wastewater treatment plants since that is our main environmental focus for our

topic. This article has good data that we could use to show the resistance rates

of Salmonella specifically in the wastewater. This source is similar to Choi’s

article as it talks about the antibiotic resistance found in bacterial genes.