Prevalence of antibiotic resistance genes in antibiotic-resistant Escherichia coli isolates in surface water of Taihu Lake Basin, China.

The rapid development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ARB) has been of concern worldwide. In this study, antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) were investigated in antibiotic-resistant Escherichia coli isolated from surface water samples (rivers, n = 17; Taihu Lake, n = 16) and from human, chicken, swine, and Egretta garzetta sources in the Taihu Basin. E. coli showing resistance to at least five drugs occurred in 31, 67, 58, 27, and 18% of the isolates from surface water (n = 665), chicken (n = 27), swine (n = 29), human (n = 45), and E. garzetta (n = 15) sources, respectively. The mean multi-antibiotic resistance (MAR) index of surface water samples (0.44) was lower than that of chicken (0.64) and swine (0.57) sources but higher than that of human (0.30) and E. garzetta sources (0.15). Ten tetracycline, four sulfonamide, four quinolone, five ß-lactamase, and two streptomycin resistance genes were detected in the corresponding antibiotic-resistant isolates. Most antibiotic-resistant E. coli harbored at least two similar functional ARGs. Int-I was detected in at least 57% of MAR E. coli isolates. The results of multiple correspondence analysis and Spearman correlation analysis suggest that antibiotic-resistant E. coli in water samples were mainly originated from swine, chicken, and/or human sources. Most of the ARGs detected in E. garzetta sources were prevalent in other sources. These data indicated that human activities may have contributed to the spread of ARB in the aquatic environment.

Characterization of antibiotic-resistance genes in antibiotic resistance Escherichia coli isolates from a lake.

The spread of antibiotic-resistance bacteria and antibiotic-resistance genes (ARGs) has been of concern worldwide. In this study, 114 Escherichia coli isolates were isolated from surface water samples of a lake to identify their susceptibility to antibiotics, including tetracycline (TC), gentamicin (GN), ampicillin (AMP), streptomycin (ST), oxytetracycline (OC), levofloxacin (LEV), nalidixic acid (NA), and sulfamethoxazole/trimethoprim (SFT). Isolates showing resistance to TC, GN, AMP, ST, OC, LEV, NA, and SFT occurred in 50, 76, 68, 71, 55, 32, 82, and 85 % of the total isolates, respectively. Thirty-seven different resistance patterns were identified, and the most abundant resistance profile (28 of 104) was TC/GN/AMP/ST/OC/LEV/NA/SFT. The occurrence of 29 ARGs were detected in their corresponding resistance clones, and 88 % of TC-resistance, 94 % of SFT-resistance, 90 % of AMP-resistance, 78 % of ST-resistance, and 72 % of quinolone-resistance clones can be described by their corresponding ARGs. It should be noted that most of these antibiotic-resistance clones harbored at least two corresponding ARGs, indicating that high frequencies of combined ARGs occurred in these isolates. In addition, 9 new types of DNA sequence of qnr(B) gene were obtained and were clustered into the same group as showed by phylogenetic trees analysis. These results suggest that the development of antibiotic resistance can be ascribed to the high frequency in the recombination of ARGs through horizontal gene transfer.