The Prevalence of Virulent and Multidrug-Resistant Enterococci in River Water and in Treated and Untreated Municipal and Hospital Wastewater

Anna Gotkowska-Płachta
Additional contact information
Anna Gotkowska-Płachta: Department of Water Protection Engineering and Environmental Microbiology, The Faculty of Geoengineering, University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, Prawocheńskiego 1, 10-719 Olsztyn, Poland

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 2, 1-18

Abstract: The aim of this study is to describe the drug resistance and virulence of enterococci in river water sampled downstream (DRW) and upstream (URW) from the wastewater discharge point, to determine the pool of virulent and drug-resistant enterococci in untreated wastewater (UWW) and the extent to which these bacteria are eliminated from hospital wastewater (HWW) and municipal wastewater treated (TWW) by biological and mechanical methods in a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP). A total of 283 strains were identified with the use of culture-dependent methods and PCR, including seven different species including E. faecalis and E. faecium which were predominant in all analyzed samples. Majority of the strains were classified as multidrug resistant (MDR), mostly on streptomycin and trimethoprim. Strains isolated from wastewater and DRW harbored van genes conditioning phenotypic resistance to vancomycin, the highest percentage of vancomycin-resistant strains (57.0%), mostly strains harboring van C1 genes (27.6%), was noted in TWW. More than 65.0% of the isolated strains had different virulence genes, the highest number of isolates were positive for cell wall adhesin efa A and sex pheromones cob , cpd, and ccf which participate in the induction of virulence. Many of the strains isolated from TWW were resistant to a higher number of drugs and were more virulent than those isolated from UWW and HWW. The enterococci isolated from DRW and wastewater were characterized by similar multidrug resistance and virulence profiles, and significant correlations were observed between these groups of isolates. These findings suggest that pathogenic enterococci are released with TWW and can spread in the river, pose a serious epidemiological threat and a risk to public health.

Keywords: enterococci; multidrug-resistant (MDR); virulence; vancomycin; river water; wastewater (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/2/563/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/2/563/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:2:p:563-:d:478481

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().