The aquatic ecosystem, a good environment for the horizontal transfer of antimicrobial resistance and virulence-associated factors among extended spectrum beta-lactamases producing E. coli
One of the main public health problems nowadays is the increase of antimicrobial resistance,
both in the hospital environment and outside it (animal environment, food and aquatic ecosystems,
among others). It is necessary to investigate the virulence-associated factors and the ability of
horizontal gene transfer among bacteria for a better understanding of the pathogenicity and the
mechanisms of dissemination of resistant bacteria. Therefore, the objective of this work was to
detect several virulence factors genes (fimA, papC, papG III, cnf1, hlyA and aer) and to determine the
conjugative capacity in a wide collection of extended-spectrum β-lactamases-producing E. coli isolated
from different sources (human, food, farms, rivers, and wastewater treatment plants). Regarding
virulence genes, fimA, papC, and aer were distributed throughout all the studied environments, papG
III was mostly related to clinical strains and wastewater is a route of dissemination for cnf1 and hlyA.
Strains isolated from aquatic environments showed an average conjugation frequencies of 1.15 × 10−1
± 5 × 10−1
, being significantly higher than those observed in strains isolated from farms and food
(p < 0.05), with frequencies of 1.53 × 10−4 ± 2.85 × 10−4 and 9.61 × 10−4 ± 1.96 × 10−3
, respectively. The
reported data suggest the importance that the aquatic environment (especially WWTPs) acquires for
the exchange of genes and the dispersion of resistance. Therefore, specific surveillance programs of
AMR indicators in wastewaters from animal or human origin are needed, in order to apply sanitation
measures to reduce the burden of resistant bacteria arriving to risky environments as WWTPs