India-UK collaborate for study of antimicrobial resistance spread in rivers

NEW DELHI: A research project funded by the United Kingdom and India, involving experts from Newcastle University, have begun studying Indian rivers to explore their role in increasing antimicrobial resistance (AMR). The project, called AMRflows, was started as approximately 58,000 babies die every year in India from superbug infections passed on from their mothers, whilst drug resistant pathogens cause between 28,000 to 38,000 extra deaths in the European Union every year. The project is supported by the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council and India’s Department of Biotechnology. The research team also includes researchers from Newcastle University, the Jumes Hutton Institute in Scotland, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) – Gandhinagar and IIT Madras. 

For the study, researchers will sample and model two contrasting river networks in India – the Musi river in Hyderabad, which has high concentrations of antibiotics released from production facilities, and the less polluted Adyar river in Chennai. The main aim of the study is to learn how far resistant bacteria travel before they die or are eaten by other organisms in a unique combination of experiments, field sampling and mathematical modelling of resistance dynamics and water flows. 

Professor David Graham, who is leading the research team from Newcastle University, said, “This project has huge potential because it will study AMR spread in a more quantitative and predictive manner, which is urgently needed for assessing environmental exposure risk. Additionally, it combines studies at various scales, ranging from the genetics of resistance gene exchange to metagenomics to micro- and macro-scale numerical modelling, which to our knowledge, has never been done before.”

The scientific advances will also allow the team to compare the effectiveness of different interventions such as separate treatment of waste streams from manufacturing of antibiotics, decentralized sewage treatment or containment reservoirs.

AMRflows is part of a £8 million package of UK-India Government-backed research aimed deepening existing scientific research collaborations with five new programmes to tackle antimicrobial resistance that could lead to important advances in the global fight against antibiotic resistant bacteria and genes.