Wastewater Treatment Plants Release Large Amounts of Extended-Spectrum β-Lactamase–Producing Escherichia coli Into the Environment

Abstract

The treatment at the WWTP led to the relative enrichment of ESBLEC. We estimated that >600 billion of ESBLEC are released into the river Doubs daily and the sludge produced by the WWTP, used as fertilizer, contains 2.6 × 10(5) ESBLEC per gram.

Extended-Spectrum β-Lactamase-Producing Escherichia Coli in Wastewaters and Refugee Camp in Lebanon

“…This was in accordance with Bréchet et al that reported that ESBL-producing E. coli were recovered from environmental samples and accounted for 0.3% of E. coli in untreated water upstream of a sewage treatment plant [57]. CTX-M was the most common detected enzyme by Bréchet et al [57], which was in agreement with our results.…”

Prevalence of Escherichia coli sequence type 131 and its H30 subclone among E. coli isolates in a French hospital

“…Hence, the great majority (>90%) of ESBL-producing or fluoroquinolone-resistant ST131 belong to subclone H30 (Table 2). Although we did not identify the type of ESBL, we could assume, according to published studies and our previous findings, that the H30 subclone mostly produced CTX-M-15-type ESBL [2,14].…”

Occurrence of Clinically Important Lineages, Including the Sequence Type 131 C1-M27 Subclone, among Extended-Spectrum-β-Lactamase-Producing Escherichia coli in Wastewater

“…Conversely, the average proportion was 3.5% (minimum, 0.2%; maximum, 11.3%) for the hospital wastewater, and this value is relatively low compared to previous studies (3.8% to 13.6%) (7). Wastewater treatment processes can increase the proportion of resistant bacteria because the presence of antibiotics used in human medicine in wastewater poses selective pressures and the high cell density sustained by a nutrient-rich environment can promote the transfer of antibiotic resistance genes (5,17). These may be reasons for the relatively high proportion of ESBLEC CFU in the WWTP samples.…”

“…Human intestinal carriage of ESBLEC is well documented in community and clinical settings (3,4). Therefore, wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) and hospitals are considered to be major sources of ESBLEC released into the environment (5). In fact, the presence of ESBLEC in hospital wastewater and the inflow and outflow of WWTPs has been well documented in previous studies (6)(7)(8).…”