Events

PEOPLE'S CHOICE FIRST PLACE WINNER

Antimicrobial resistance is an urgent and emerging global human health concern. Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are considered one of the main contributors in generation of antibiotic resistance and its dissemination to the environment. The important gap to fill in our knowledge is the effect of seasonal, geographical and wastewater treatment processes on the emergence and fate of antibiotic resistant bacteria in WWTPs. Standard CLSIM100 Disk Diffusion was performed on approximately 1200 E.coli isolates collected from 17 WWTPs across Oregon over two seasons (summer and winter) in the time span of two years, and statistical analysis was performed using R (version 3.6.1). 24% of E.coli isolates were antibiotic resistant in which 76% were resistant to Ampicillin and 25% were multi-drug resistant (MDR) (resistance to three or more antibiotics). Our data showed statistical importance of seasonal and geographical variation on prevalence of antibiotic resistant E.coli .  Presence of antibiotic resistant, MDR and ESBL producing E.coli in wastewater effluent and biosolid suggest the possible risk of human exposure to these resistant elements.

This project presenter is available for live video chat on Sept. 1, 2020 from 1:00 - 2:45 p.m. PDT.