Comparison of Methods for Assessing Antibiotic Resistance in Wastewater and Recycled Water Samples

Madison Haddix,* Jean McLain, Amy Pruden, Emily Garner
Wadsworth Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV 26506

Presentation Category: Engineering (Poster Presentation)

Student’s Major: Civil Engineering

There is increasing interest in the water industry in monitoring antibiotic resistance in wastewater and recycled water to ensure that water treatment effectively prevents the spread of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Current monitoring methods include culture-based approaches and DNA-based methods such as metagenomic sequencing and quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) that directly quantify antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). Little is known about how the results of these methods compare. Wastewater influent and recycled water samples were collected from four water utilities and characterized using a suite of culture and DNA-based methods. Spearman’s Rank-Order correlations were calculated using RStudio software and detection of resistance to five classes of antibiotics were compared between methods and water types. Preliminary findings indicate that selection of monitoring method can critically affect the findings of monitoring efforts for antibiotic resistance in wastewater and recycled water. The findings of this work can help utilities and researchers better select monitoring methods to quantify the presence of antibiotic resistance traits so they can prevent their spread to help maintain the effectiveness of antibiotics.

Funding: National Science Foundation CBET #1438328

Program/mechanism supporting research/creative efforts: Other Summer Research Internship