A Disaster In The Making : The emergence of new forms of drug resistant bacteria will threaten patients worldwide

Research has shown that polluted rivers in India are flooded with bacteria that are resistant to many antibiotics.

Pollution is an omnipresent evil that modern day India confronts on a daily basis. And with rapid strides in industrialisation and lax government control we now face a pandemic of pollution affecting everything around us.Industrial effluents and chemicals often form the major portion of the lethal pollutants in our natural resources.

A new study by a group of Swedish scientists published in the recent version of PLoS ONE has shown how polluted rivers in India are flooded with bacteria with serious levels of drug resistance. In this particular example nearly 90 bulk drug manufacturing pharmaceutical companies were dumping the effluent/waste water from their factories into the waste water treatment plant in Patancheru, Hyderabad. Scientists have used a new method of DNA/genetic sequencing to show that bacteria present in this water are full of resistance genes that protect them from the currently available antibiotics.

Since the bacteria in the rivers are constantly exposed to moderate to high levels of antibiotics they develop a resistance by the modification of their genetic structure. Once the resistance genes are developed they are transmitted on small genetic cassettes or plasmids that can spread to other bacteria. Though some of the bacteria in the Indian rivers may not affect humans directly they can transfer their drug resistance genes to other harmful bacteria which can propagate these to humans. This will result in the emergence of new forms of bacteria like the recent discovery of New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase-1 or NDM-1 (which was later renamed Plasmidencoding Carbapenem-resistant Metallobeta-Lactamase or PCM) which is resistant to most available antibiotics.

In combination with rampant misuse, self-medication and aggressive prescribing of antibiotics by the medical community we will continue to face the emergence of drug resistant bacteria that will threaten patients worldwide.