Treatment Processes for Microbial Resistance Mitigation: The Technological Contribution to Tackle the Problem of Antibiotic Resistance

Abstract

Advances generated in medicine, science, and technology have contributed to a better quality of life in recent years; however, antimicrobial resistance has also benefited from these advances, creating various environmental and health problems. Several determinants may explain the problem of antimicrobial resistance, such as wastewater treatment plants that represent a powerful agent for the promotion of antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ARB) and antibiotic resistance genes (ARG), and are an important factor in mitigating the problem. This article focuses on reviewing current technologies for ARB and ARG removal treatments, which include disinfection, constructed wetlands, advanced oxidation processes (AOP), anaerobic, aerobic, or combined treatments, and nanomaterial-based treatments. Some of these technologies are highly intensive, such as AOP; however, other technologies require long treatment times or high doses of oxidizing agents. From this review, it can be concluded that treatment technologies must be significantly enhanced before the environmental and heath problems associated with antimicrobial resistance can be effectively solved. In either case, it is necessary to achieve total removal of bacteria and genes to avoid the possibility of regrowth given by the favorable environmental conditions at treatment plant facilities.

Release of Antibiotic-Resistance Genes from Hospitals and a Wastewater Treatment Plant in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal

“…Figure 4 shows the LRV of ARGs and intI1 at the WWTP. ARGs are removed in biological treatment processes by the mechanism of sorption and biodegradation [37]. The highest and lowest LRVs were observed for tet(B) (1.3 ± 0.2) and sul1 (0.4 ± 0.3), respectively.…”

A Review on Occurrence and Spread of Antibiotic Resistance in Wastewaters and in Wastewater Treatment Plants: Mechanisms and Perspectives

“…Therefore, this review will focus on documenting what is known about the removal efficiency of different treatment processes or technologies, i.e., what are the reported elimination efficiencies of ARGs and ARB for different treatment technologies for both wastewater and sludge, and whether the reported results are consistent. Moreover, in this work special efforts have been put into gathering and reviewing results from studies of elimination of ARGs and ARB in different sludge and biosolids treatment processes, as this has been more or less overlooked in other reviews ( Barancheshme and Munir, 2018 ; Pazda et al, 2019 ; Bairán et al, 2020 ; Zhu et al, 2021 ).…”

Oxidation of sulfonamide micropollutants by versatile peroxidase from Bjerkandera adusta

“…However, wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) are not entirely able to remove these trace organic compounds because they usually work to reduce the biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), nutrients, and microorganisms (He et al 2015). Recent review articles on the methods for the degradation of antibiotics discuss the potentialities and limitations of such techniques and highlight the need for research before industrial application (Homem and Santos 2011, Méndez et al 2017, Bairán et al 2020). Among the proposed technologies, biocatalysis has emerged as an attractive alternative due to the already sustainable characteristics of the enzymatic processes (Wen et al 2010, García-Zamora et al 2018, Bilal et al 2019.…”