Antibiotic resistance increases with local temperature

Derek R. MacFadden (), Sarah F. McGough, David Fisman, Mauricio Santillana () and John S. Brownstein ()
Additional contact information
Derek R. MacFadden: University of Toronto
Sarah F. McGough: Harvard Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University
David Fisman: University of Toronto
Mauricio Santillana: Computational Epidemiology Group, Boston Children’s Hospital
John S. Brownstein: Computational Epidemiology Group, Boston Children’s Hospital

Nature Climate Change, 2018, vol. 8, issue 6, 510-514

Abstract: Abstract Bacteria that cause infections in humans can develop or acquire resistance to antibiotics commonly used against them1,2. Antimicrobial resistance (in bacteria and other microbes) causes significant morbidity worldwide, and some estimates indicate the attributable mortality could reach up to 10 million by 20502–4. Antibiotic resistance in bacteria is believed to develop largely under the selective pressure of antibiotic use; however, other factors may contribute to population level increases in antibiotic resistance1,2. We explored the role of climate (temperature) and additional factors on the distribution of antibiotic resistance across the United States, and here we show that increasing local temperature as well as population density are associated with increasing antibiotic resistance (percent resistant) in common pathogens. We found that an increase in temperature of 10 °C across regions was associated with an increases in antibiotic resistance of 4.2%, 2.2%, and 2.7% for the common pathogens Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Staphylococcus aureus. The associations between temperature and antibiotic resistance in this ecological study are consistent across most classes of antibiotics and pathogens and may be strengthening over time. These findings suggest that current forecasts of the burden of antibiotic resistance could be significant underestimates in the face of a growing population and climate change4.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0161-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:nat:natcli:v:8:y:2018:i:6:d:10.1038_s41558-018-0161-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nclimate/

DOI: 10.1038/s41558-018-0161-6

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Climate Change is currently edited by Bronwyn Wake

More articles in Nature Climate Change from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().