Assessing risks of antimicrobial resistance
Nebraska is leading a national effort to assess the health risks posed by antimicrobial-resistant pathogens in the environment.
Resistant bacteria have long been associated with medical settings, but wastewater discharge and agricultural runoff into rivers and lakes are increasingly recognized as contributing to human exposure.
Activities such as swimming or fishing in contaminated water may pose a health risk, depending on a number of factors. This Husker-led project will identify those factors and develop a tool to help U.S. and global water managers and policymakers identify areas of concern.
Project leader Xu Li and colleagues from three other institutions are collecting samples from the Elkhorn River in Nebraska as well as from varying environments and wastewater treatment scenarios in California, New Jersey and Hawaii.
“Most risk scenarios are based on assumptions or a lab test. This will be one of the first studies to get field data to give an idea of what the level of risk is,” said Li, Dale Jacobson and Debra Leigh Professor of environmental engineering. “By covering different parts of the country, with different flow rates and land use scenarios, we’ll get a more comprehensive picture.”
Using a technique called shotgun metagenomic sequencing, the researchers will identify where resistant pathogens in the water samples originated, such as hospital waste, wastewater effluent, agriculture or naturally occurring in the environment.
Li and other Huskers who specialize in complex environmental and microbiology modeling will work with colleagues at Iowa State University to use the data to create a generalizable risk assessment tool. They are also establishing industry partnerships with wastewater treatment utilities.
Although resistant microbes occur naturally in the soil – an evolutionary response to fending off competitors’ offense mechanisms – Li anticipates they will pose little risk to humans.
This project establishes UNL as a research leader in this area.
Xu Li
The primary concern is microbes developing resistance from exposure to the antibiotics in domestic wastewater, which may contaminate surface water, Li said.
“[Nebraska] has a long history of studying antimicrobial resistance in both agricultural and urban systems,” he said. “This project establishes UNL as a research leader in this area.”
Li’s Husker colleagues include professors of civil and environmental engineering Shannon Bartelt-Hunt, the Donald R. Voelte, Jr. and Nancy A. Keegan Chair of Engineering, and Yusong Li, associate dean in the College of Engineering; and Bing Wang, associate professor in Food, Science and Technology
The Environmental Protection Agency funds this research.
Additional Content
From left: Xu Li, Shannon Bartelt-Hunt, Yusong Li and Bing Wang