Epidemiology of multidrug resistant bacteria according to different climatic conditions

Funding:

Swiss National Science Foundation

Swiss Government Excellence Scholarships for Foreign Students

Bourse Augustin Lombard

Bourse Ernst and Lucie Schmidheiny Foundation

Microbial populations which are resistant to antibiotics are an emerging environmental concern with potentially serious implications for public health. The presence of Extended Spectrum ß-lactamases (ESBLs) and Metallo ß-lactamases (MBLs) in the isolates from environmental samples has important implications for humans who depend on public water supply and sanitation facilities. Thus, there is a growing concern in exploring the occurrence of antibiotic resistance in the environment with no limitations to the factors that contribute to their emergence. The aquatic environments are considered as hot-spot for the acquisition and spread of antibiotic resistance due to the contemporary pollution by emerging contaminants derived from anthropogenic activities. The objective of this research is to identify the possible antibiotic resistance mechanisms prevailing in environmental bacteria, in particular Pseudomonas spp., under tropical versus temperate climatic conditions; Democratic Republic of the Congo, India, and Switzerland (Geneva Lake). Incorporating international surveillance this study provides baseline information for further investigations on the prevalence of antibiotic bacteria resistant in hospital and communal effluents and their spread into the aquatic ecosystem, as well as potential threats to public health that follow from this.

Contact and supervisors:

Dr. Naresh Devarajan (Past PhD student)

Supervisor: John Poté & Bas Ibelings

Partners: University of Kinshasa and UPN (Profs. Josué Mubedi, Pius Mpiana and Vicky Elongo), and Jamal Mohamed College-Bharathidasan University (Prof. Kandasamy Prabakar)