TY - JOUR
T1 - Implications of indoor microbial ecology and evolution on antibiotic resistance
AU - Ben Maamar, Sarah
AU - Hu, Jinglin
AU - Hartmann, Erica M.
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgements We acknowledge the feedback from the Hart-mann lab group in the preparation of this manuscript. This work was supported by the Searle Leadership Fund.
PY - 2020/1/1
Y1 - 2020/1/1
N2 - The indoor environment is an important source of microbial exposures for its human occupants. While we naturally want to favor positive health outcomes, built environment design and operation may counter-intuitively favor negative health outcomes, particularly with regard to antibiotic resistance. Indoor environments contain microbes from both human and non-human origins, providing a unique venue for microbial interactions, including horizontal gene transfer. Furthermore, stressors present in the built environment could favor the exchange of genetic material in general and the retention of antibiotic resistance genes in particular. Intrinsic and acquired antibiotic resistance both pose a potential threat to human health; these phenomena need to be considered and controlled separately. The presence of both environmental and human-associated microbes, along with their associated antibiotic resistance genes, in the face of stressors, including antimicrobial chemicals, creates a unique opportunity for the undesirable spread of antibiotic resistance. In this review, we summarize studies and findings related to various interactions between human-associated bacteria, environmental bacteria, and built environment conditions, and particularly their relation to antibiotic resistance, aiming to guide “healthy” building design.
AB - The indoor environment is an important source of microbial exposures for its human occupants. While we naturally want to favor positive health outcomes, built environment design and operation may counter-intuitively favor negative health outcomes, particularly with regard to antibiotic resistance. Indoor environments contain microbes from both human and non-human origins, providing a unique venue for microbial interactions, including horizontal gene transfer. Furthermore, stressors present in the built environment could favor the exchange of genetic material in general and the retention of antibiotic resistance genes in particular. Intrinsic and acquired antibiotic resistance both pose a potential threat to human health; these phenomena need to be considered and controlled separately. The presence of both environmental and human-associated microbes, along with their associated antibiotic resistance genes, in the face of stressors, including antimicrobial chemicals, creates a unique opportunity for the undesirable spread of antibiotic resistance. In this review, we summarize studies and findings related to various interactions between human-associated bacteria, environmental bacteria, and built environment conditions, and particularly their relation to antibiotic resistance, aiming to guide “healthy” building design.
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U2 - 10.1038/s41370-019-0171-0
DO - 10.1038/s41370-019-0171-0
M3 - Review article
C2 - 31591493
AN - SCOPUS:85074602850
VL - 30
JO - Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology
JF - Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology
SN - 1559-0631
IS - 1
ER -