Assessing the development and spread of antimicrobial resistance from Pharmaceutical effluents in South India

Abstract

The study was designed to assess the role of pharmaceutical wastewater samples including environmental water samples 55 Nos from pharmaceutical industries at Tamil Nadu Andhra Pradesh Telangana Kerala and Karnataka in southern India In this study a novel quick accurate and sensitive approach for the simultaneous quantification of 11 antibiotic residues was established and triple quadrupole mass spectrometry UFLC MS MS Ultra Fast Liquid Chromatography and selective solid phase extraction SPE was used for validation These procedures were shown to be quite environmentally friendly when compared to other contemporary methods based on the Green Analytical Procedure Indexs evaluation of greenness The bacteria isolated in 48 out of 55 samples were identified and confirmed using conventional biochemical tests VITEK 2 Compact and VITEK MS The phenotypic antibiotic susceptibility tests using 16 antibiotics and genotypic detection of antibiotic resistance by PCR using 12 AMR genes encoding carbapenems quinoline aminoglycoside beta lactam belonging to blaOXA 58, blaOXA 22 qnrA qnrB aac6Ib cr aac 3XI mec A qepA aadB blaVIM blaOXA 48 and blaNDM were carried out. By phenotypic resistance profiling resistance was exhibited to 14 antibiotics among 16 tested Similarly in genotypic resistance profiling among 12 resistant genes tested a maximum of three resistant genes were noticed in Pseudomonas aeruginosa As per the results of this study pharmaceutical companies must have an efficient wastewater treatment facility before discharging wastewater into the environment in order to stop the spread of antibiotic resistance There were positive and negative correlation observed between phenotypic and genotypic resistance among different antibiotics and their resistance genes indicating variations in the resistant gene expression newline