Antimicrobial resistance in Enterococcus spp. isolated in inflow, effluent and sludge from municipal sewage water treatment plants

• Type: Article in International Scientific Journal
• Date: 2006

Authors

Paulo Martins da Costa (Author) ICBAS; Paulo Vaz Pires (Author) ICBAS

Journal

Title: Water Research

Vol. 40

Pages: 1735-1740

ISSN: 0043-1354

Publisher: Elsevier

Indexing

ISI Web of Knowledge - 102 Citations

ISI Web of Science

Scopus - 143 Citations

Scientific classification

FOS: Medical and Health sciences > Other medical sciences

Other information

Authenticus ID: P-004-M5F

DOI: 10.1016/j.watres.2006.02.025

Abstract (EN): Antimicrobial resistance of enterococci was investigated in 42 samples of crude inflow, treated effluent and sludge collected in 14 municipal sewage treatment plants of Portugal. A total of 983 enterococci were recovered and tested, using the diffusion agar method, regarding their sensitivity to 10 different antimicrobial drugs. Multidrug resistance was present in 49.4% of the isolates. Only 3.3% and 0.6% of the investigated strains were resistant to ampicillin and vancomycin, respectively. Resistances found against rifampicin (51.5%), tetracycline (34.6%), erythromycin (24.8%) and nitrofurantoin (22.5%), are causes for substantial concern. Almost 14% of isolates were resistant to ciprofloxacin. Wastewater treatment resulted in enterococci decrease between 0.5 and 4log; nevertheless, more than 4.4 x 10(5)CFU/100ml were present in the outflow of the plants. Our data indicate that the use of antimicrobials had created a large pool of resistance genes and that sewage treatment processes are unable to avoid the dissemination of resistant enterococci into the environment.

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific

No. of pages: 6