title: Aquaculture as yet another environmental gateway to the development and globalisation of antimicrobial resistance.
abstract: Aquaculture uses hundreds of tonnes of antimicrobials annually to prevent and treat bacterial infection. The passage of these antimicrobials into the aquatic environment selects for resistant bacteria and resistance genes and stimulates bacterial mutation, recombination, and horizontal gene transfer. The potential bridging of aquatic and human pathogen resistomes leads to emergence of new antimicrobial-resistant bacteria and global dissemination of them and their antimicrobial resistance genes into animal and human populations. Efforts to prevent antimicrobial overuse in aquaculture must include education of all stakeholders about its detrimental effects on the health of fish, human beings, and the aquatic ecosystem (the notion of One Health), and encouragement of environmentally friendly measures of disease prevention, including vaccines, probiotics, and bacteriophages. Adoption of these measures is a crucial supplement to efforts dealing with antimicrobial resistance by developing new therapeutic agents, if headway is to be made against the increasing problem of antimicrobial resistance in human and veterinary medicine.
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology and Immunology and Department of Pathology, New York Medical College, Valhalla, New York, NY, USA. Electronic address: cabello@nymc.edu.
authors.forename: Felipe C
authors.initials: FC
authors.lastname: Cabello
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology and Immunology and Department of Pathology, New York Medical College, Valhalla, New York, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Henry P
authors.initials: HP
authors.lastname: Godfrey
authors.affiliation: Centro i-mar and CeBiB, Universidad de Los Lagos, Puerto Montt, Chile.
authors.forename: Alejandro H
authors.initials: AH
authors.lastname: Buschmann
authors.affiliation: Instituto de Farmacia, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Austral de Chile, Valdivia, Chile.
authors.forename: Humberto J
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Dölz
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents / Q000627:therapeutic use; D017756:Aquaculture / Q000379:methods*; D001419:Bacteria / Q000187:drug effects; D001424:Bacterial Infections / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000517:prevention & control*; D024881:Drug Resistance, Bacterial / Q000187:drug effects*; D005399:Fishes; D006801:Humans; D038622:Internationality
chemical_list: D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents