Nationwide Assessment of Water Quality in Rivers Across Lebanon by Quantifying Fecal Indicators Densities and Profiling Antibiotic Resistance of

Overview

Journal Antibiotics (Basel)

Specialty Pharmacology

Date 2021 Aug 6

PMID 34356804

Citations 19

Authors

Lea A Dagher

Jouman Hassan

Samer Kharroubi

Hadi Jaafar

Issmat I Kassem

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

The use of contaminated water has been associated with severe disease outbreaks. Due to widespread pollution with untreated sewage, concerns have been raised over water quality in Lebanon, a country with well-documented challenges in infrastructure. Here, we evaluated the water quality of major rivers in Lebanon by quantifying the densities of fecal indicator bacteria (fecal coliforms and ). Additionally, we assessed the dissemination of antibiotic-resistant in river water. Composite water samples ( = 132) were collected from fourteen rivers, and 378 were isolated and analyzed. Fecal coliforms and were detected in 96.29% and 95.5% of the samples, respectively. Additionally, 73.48-61.3% and 31.81% of the samples exceeded the microbiological acceptability standards for irrigation and the fecal coliform limit for recreational activities, respectively. The exhibited resistance to ampicillin (40% of isolates), amoxicillin + clavulanic acid (42%), cefepime (4%), cefotaxime (14%), cefalexin (46%), cefixime (17%), doripenem (0.3%), imipenem (0.5%), gentamicin (6%), kanamycin (9%), streptomycin (35%), tetracycline (35%), ciprofloxacin (10%), norfloxacin (7%), trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (32%), and chloramphenicol (13%). Notably, 45.8% of the isolates were classified as multidrug resistant (MDR). Our results highlight the need to urgently address fecal pollution and the dissemination of antibiotic resistance in Lebanese rivers.

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