Urbanization and Waterborne Pathogen Emergence in Low-Income Countries: Where and How to Conduct Surveys?

Type Article
Date 2020-01
Language English
Author(s) Bastaraud Alexandra1, Cecchi Philippe2, 3, Handschumacher Pascal4, Altmann Mathias5, Jambou Ronan6
Affiliation(s) 1 : Laboratoire d’Hygiène des Aliments et de l’Environnement, Institut Pasteur de Madagascar, BP 1274, Antananarivo 101, Madagascar
2 : MARBEC (IRD, IFREMER, UM2 and CNRS), University Montpellier, 34095 Montpellier, France
3 : Centre de Recherche Océanologique (CRO), Abidjan BPV 18, Ivory Coast
4 : IRD UMR 912 SESSTIM, INSERM-IRD-Université de Marseille II, 13000 Marseille, France
5 : ISPED Université Victor Segalen Bordeaux II, 146 rue Leo Saignat, 33076 Bordeaux cedex, France
6 : Département de Parasitologie et des insectes vecteurs, Institut Pasteur Paris, 75015 Paris, France
Source International Journal Of Environmental Research And Public Health (1661-7827) (MDPI AG), 2020-01 , Vol. 17 , N. 2 , P. 480 (19p.)
DOI 10.3390/ijerph17020480
WOS© Times Cited 13
Note This article belongs to the Special Issue Environmental Research, Public Health, and Dynamic Open Innovation: From Smart Cities to the Sharing Economy
Keyword(s) waterborne diseases, drug resistance, urbanization, surface water, plastics, metagenomic
Abstract

A major forthcoming sanitary issue concerns the apparition and spreading of drug-resistant microorganisms, potentially threatening millions of humans. In low-income countries, polluted urban runoff and open sewage channels are major sources of microbes. These microbes join natural microbial communities in aquatic ecosystems already impacted by various chemicals, including antibiotics. These composite microbial communities must adapt to survive in such hostile conditions, sometimes promoting the selection of antibiotic-resistant microbial strains by gene transfer. The low probability of exchanges between planktonic microorganisms within the water column may be significantly improved if their contact was facilitated by particular meeting places. This could be specifically the case within biofilms that develop on the surface of the myriads of floating macroplastics increasingly polluting urban tropical surface waters. Moreover, as uncultivable bacterial strains could be involved, analyses of the microbial communities in their whole have to be performed. This means that new-omic technologies must be routinely implemented in low- and middle-income countries to detect the appearance of resistance genes in microbial ecosystems, especially when considering the new ‘plastic context.’ We summarize the related current knowledge in this short review paper to anticipate new strategies for monitoring and surveying microbial communities.

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Bastaraud Alexandra, Cecchi Philippe, Handschumacher Pascal, Altmann Mathias, Jambou Ronan (2020). Urbanization and Waterborne Pathogen Emergence in Low-Income Countries: Where and How to Conduct Surveys? International Journal Of Environmental Research And Public Health, 17(2), 480 (19p.). Publisher's official version : https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17020480 , Open Access version : https://archimer.ifremer.fr/doc/00601/71328/