摘要

传染病的成功治疗在很大程度上依赖于抗生素的治疗用途。然而，抗生素在人类和动物中的高度使用导致对细菌群体的压力增加，有利于抗性表型。抗生素从各种排放源到达环境，并且以相对低的浓度检测。考虑到在亚抑制浓度下发生选择性压力的可能性，环境抗生素水平对微生物群落和抗性水平的生态影响是非常未知的。抗生素抗性基因（ARG）和抗生素浓度的定量正变得司空见惯。然而，这两个参数通常分别在特定的时空背景下进行评估，因此错过了研究抗生素和ARG如何相关的机会。此外，抗生素（多重）抗药性越来越受到研究人员，政策制定者，企业和民间社会的关注。我们的目的是收集目前可用的抗生素浓度和ARG丰度的有限数据，以探索是否可以在地表水，沉积物和废水中确定关系。使用抗生素选择压力的度量，即针对微生物抑制效力校正的浓度总和，将环境中抗生素的存在与ARG的总相对丰度相关联，同时控制非独立变异的基本来源，例如国家，年，研究，样本和抗生素类。该荟萃分析的结果显示抗生素压力和环境隔室类型对ARG丰度增加的显着统计效应，即使在非常低的水平。如果全球环境抗生素污染继续存在，预计ARG丰度将继续增加。此外，我们的分析强调了整合现有信息的重要性，特别是在试图用有限的机械理解描述复杂关系时。

The successful treatment of infectious diseases heavily relies on the therapeutic usage of antibiotics. However, the high use of antibiotics in humans and animals leads to increasing pressure on bacterial populations in favour of resistant phenotypes. Antibiotics reach the environment from a variety of emission sources and are being detected at relatively low concentrations. Given the possibility of selective pressure to occur at sub-inhibitory concentrations, the ecological impact of environmental antibiotic levels on microbial communities and resistance levels is vastly unknown. Quantification of antibiotic-resistance genes (ARG) and of antibiotic concentrations is becoming commonplace. Yet, these two parameters are often assessed separately and in a specific spatiotemporal context, thus missing the opportunity to investigate how antibiotics and ARGs relate. Furthermore, antibiotic (multi)resistance has been receiving ever growing attention from researchers, policy-makers, businesses and civil society. Our aim was to collect the limited data on antibiotic concentrations and ARG abundance currently available to explore if a relationship could be defined in surface waters, sediments and wastewaters. A metric of antibiotic selective pressure, i.e. the sum of concentrations corrected for microbial inhibition potency, was used to correlate the presence of antibiotics in the environment to total relative abundance of ARG while controlling for basic sources of non-independent variability, such as country, year, study, sample and antibiotic class. The results of this meta-analysis show a significant statistical effect of antibiotic pressure and type of environmental compartment on the increase of ARG abundance even at very low levels. If global environmental antibiotic pollution continues, ARG abundance is expected to continue as well. Moreover, our analysis emphasizes the importance of integrating existing information particularly when attempting to describe complex relationships with limited mechanistic understanding.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30599352