People in the Netherlands who travel abroad are unknowingly contributing to the rise in antibiotic resistance by picking up gut bacteria that contain drug resistance genes while abroad and then returning home. The same is probably true for travelers elsewhere, the countries with a high prevalenceresistant bacteriavisit.
John Penders of Maastricht University in the Netherlands and his colleagues took stool swabs from 190 Dutch travelers before and after trips to countries in Southeast Asia, South Asia, North Africa and East Africa and analyzed the bacteria in the samples.
The team found that these travelers returned with gut microbiomes that contained bacteria with many more and different antibiotic resistance genes than when they left.
“We know that antibiotic resistance is a global problem, but we also know that certain countries have a much higher prevalence than others,” says Penders.
Johan Bengtsson-Palme of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden conducted a similar but smaller study six years ago. “My impression at the time was that there were a few resistance genes that were very widespread,” he says. “This study shows that the problem is broader. There is a whole arsenal of different resistances that you pick up when you travel.”
The presence of these resistance genes does not pose a direct threat to travelers as long as they are healthy. It only becomes a problem when they get an infection that is difficult to treat, or when they come into contact with seriously ill people and spread the resistant genes.
“The longer the gut microbiome stays in this state in which it has acquired additional resistance genes, the more opportunities it has to spread,” says Bram van Bunnik from the University of Edinburgh, UK.
Reference:Genome Medicine 2021,Destination shapes antibiotic resistance gene acquisitions, abundance increases, and diversity changes in Dutch travelers
