First Indian ‘One-Health’ Study on Antibiotic Resistance
in Commensal Coliform from Humans, Animals, and Water from a Rural
Community in India
Dr. Ashok J. Tamhankar
Antibiotic-resistance
has become a threat to global public health. Animal and human fecal
flora and the environment, including water sources, serve as natural habitats
and reservoirs of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and resistance genes. Thus,
within the community, resistant bacteria circulated from person to person or from
animals and environment to person, or vice versa. Though the presence and
patterns of antibiotic resistant commensal indicator bacteria E. coli isolates from humans, animals, and water have
been studied in isolation, it is now recognized that they need to be studied
together, i.e., using the ‘one-health’ approach.
Our research group (Drs Manju Raj
Purohit , Salesh Chandran , Harshada Shah , Vishal Diwan , Ashok J. Tamhankar and Cecilia Stålsby Lundborg) therefore decided to phenotype and genotype
antibiotic-resistant commensal Escherichia
coli (E. coli) from humans, animals, and water from the same community with
a ‘one-health’ approach. The samples were collected from a village belonging to
demographic surveillance site of R.D. Gardi Medical
College Ujjain, Central India. Commensal coliforms from stool samples from
children aged 1–3 years and their environment (animals, drinking water from
children's households, common source- and waste-water) were studied for
antibiotic susceptibility and plasmid-encoded resistance genes. E. coli isolates from human (n = 127),
animal (n = 21), waste- (n = 12), source- (n = 10), and household drinking
water (n = 122) carried 70%, 29%, 41%, 30%, and 30% multi-drug resistance, respectively.
Extended spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL) producers were 57% in human and 23% in
environmental isolates. Co-resistance was frequent for penicillin,
cephalosporin, and quinolone. Antibiotic-resistance genes blaCTX-M-9 and qnrS
were most frequent. Group D-type isolates with resistance genes were mainly
from humans and wastewater. Colistin resistance, or the mcr-1 gene, was not
detected. The frequency of resistance, co-resistance, and resistant genes are
high and similar in coliforms from humans and their environment. This
emphasizes the need to mitigate antibiotic resistance with a ‘one-health’
approach in India and everywhere. The details of this research can be accessed
in the article in Int. J. Environ. Res. Public
Health 2017
, 14(4), 386; doi:10.3390/ijerph14040386
