It turns out that problematic bacteria are great lovers of streams: a new Israeli study found that polluted streams may be a breeding ground for antibiotic-resistant bacteria
By Shira Ha'Meiri, Angle - news agency for science and the environment
When I was little, my grandmother - who worked for many years as a head nurse in a hospital - would allow me to eat things that fell on the floor at home; Even those who crossed the "three second rule". She didn't freak out when we shoved too black fingers in her mouth or when we accidentally ate an ant. Her motto was clear: "A little dirt - good for health." She knew, thanks to science but also thanks to her intuitive and grandmotherly gut feeling - that there are things that our body needs to learn to adapt to, that being too clean is also fragile and that it's better that the immune system of all of us learns to deal with a little dirt. But what happens when the "dirt" adapts itself - and adapts itself to us and the obstacles we put before it?
When the bacteria themselves learn to "deal with a little medicine" and adapt to our inventions - the situation is already less pleasant. And when bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics, the discovery of which was an important scientific revolution like no other, and the drugs we produced suddenly fall in the battle against the adapting bacteria - we find ourselves in a serious problem.
Now, it turns out that these enhanced microbes have particularly favored habitats: A new Israeli study found that polluted streams could be a hotbed for the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. What can be done about it?
A blow precedes the cure
For the past 100 years, antibiotics have been used as the main drug against infectious diseases of bacterial origin. We all know it: we go to the doctor, barely enough to explain what we feel - and antibiotics come up as a possible remedy. But not only we have become accustomed to the presence of antibiotics in our lives; The bacteria too They developed adaptation mechanisms for treatment using it. This process is gaining momentum: as the use of antibiotics increases, so does the number of bacteria that are resistant to them. This is a difficult problem: The resistant bacteria cause more prolonged illnesses - and because of that, sometimes even more difficult.
These bacteria adapt to the various drugs through changes in the genetic material and with the help of the accumulation of unique genes that help them break down or eliminate the drug. In addition, in some cases, bacteria are able to transfer these abilities from one to another, when they share a plasmid - a circular genetic material that is not part of the bacterial chromosome and that can be transferred relatively easily between different bacteria, on the back of which resistance to the same drug is coded. Where are these durable creatures? First of all, in the great bastion of bacteria: the hospitals. But not only there: they are also found in nature, in the sea.
Indeed, recently, dangerous bacteria have been identified at bathing beaches throughout Israel that have developed resistance to broad-spectrum antibiotics (which work against a large number of bacteria) and that may cause infectious diseases, such as pneumonia and even multi-system inflammation. "We wanted to understand the paths of the bacteria - how they got to the shores," says Dr. Maxim Rubin-Bloom, a marine biologist from the Seas and Lakes Research Institute and one of the authors of the study. "For the most part, the resistant bacteria don't just hang around outside, but come from some kind of pollution."
To understand the source from which those bacteria came, in the new study, which was carried out as part of a collaboration between Robin-Bloom and Dr. Peleg Astrakhan from the Sea and Lake Research Institute and Dr. Regev Cohen, director of the Infectious Diseases Unit at the Hillel Yaffe Medical Center, which was conducted with the budget of the " Clear" and published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, the researchers examined water samples fromAlexander Stream the polluted "We used an innovative method: after filtering the stream water, we extracted DNA - and sequenced the genetic material so that we could read it like a book," says Robin-Bloom. "Using powerful computing power, we searched for the bacteria that are there and whether they have resistance to antibiotics."
Flowing bacteria
The researchers discovered that streams that are polluted due to effluent (treated sewage) and due to raw sewage that comes from populated and agricultural areas and farms - may be a focus of the spread of bacteria resistant to antibiotics. The results of the study show that these outbreaks are seasonally affected. In winter, it is the inflow of sewage that flushes the resistant bacteria from polluted sources into the water sources. In the summer, the bacterial outbreaks occur after periods of heat: "Bacteria love heat," explains Rubin-Bloom.
In addition, the researchers found that a third of the genes related to the resistance of the bacteria in Nahal Alexander are encoded in plasmids - the same genetic material through which the bacteria sometimes transfer traits from one to another. "Although bacteria are seen as primitive and small - but they know how to do amazing things, like transfer genetic material to their neighbors," says Robin-Bloom. "In the research, we pointed out that this ability causes a situation where we produce new, antibiotic-resistant bacteria - which will then circulate in nature."
Fighting bacteria
According to Rubin-Bloom, we have something to do about it - at the national, research and personal level as well. "We must establish a system to monitor pathogens (disease-causing bacteria - s.m.) and antibiotic-resistant bacteria in all streams and water sources in Israel; Especially next to those that flow in potentially contaminated places," he says. "This is an important and essential step. In addition, we must continue to investigate; Among other things, we need to check the pathways of the bacteria that lead them to our sea."
Additional measures that could help in the war against resistant bacteria are reducing the administration of antibiotics to patients when this is not necessary, and the promotion and development of technologies that identify Is an infection indeed bacterial?, of new antibiotics and other methods for dealing with bacteria (such as air filtration) and of technologies for destroying antibiotic residues.
And at the level of each and every one of us, it is important to be aware of the problem of bacteria in the water and act accordingly. "The last thing is very simple: if you have a wound, even a small one - it is important that you wash and disinfect it immediately after entering the sea and water sources," concludes Robin-Bloom.
More of the topic in Hayadan:
