About this Research Topic
In the “One Health” context, many studies addressed the spread and epidemiology of Multi-Drug-Resistant Organisms in humans, animals, and environments. This led to a better understanding of the mechanisms of transmission of these agents and antibiotic-resistance encoding genes and their microenvironments as well as their interchange between the different parties of the One Health triangle. Unfortunately, these studies have only been carried out in some countries, while others remain without a real understanding of the epidemiology of resistance from this perspective.
Many areas of the world are particularly interesting in terms of resistance endemicity; the Middle East, North Africa, as well as many European countries, are not exceptions. Mostly, this is due to their unique societal, religious, economic, and demographic characteristics. The studies exploring resistance in hospitals and humans are countless, fewer are those exploring animals and nature. More importantly, in view of the geographic and cultural changes imposed by war migrations, an in-depth assessment of the interlinkages existing between humans, animals, and environments is needed. Descriptive studies of prevalence and surveillance of resistant bacteria, identification of new/undescribed reservoirs and mechanisms of resistance, channels of transmission and subsequent alterations of the flora, are also instrumental in our battle against bacterial resistance.
In this Research Topic, the intention is to further explore the magnitude of resistance spread and to discover the channels of resistance transmission between humans, animals, and environment. Special attention and consideration will be given to studies investigating the classical settings such as hospitals, health care institutions, homes, schools, farms, work-sites, etc. and unusual settings such as wastewater, company animals and pet shops, insects, etc.
Thanks to Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS), it is now possible to explore the origin of Multi-Drug Resistance (MDR) bacteria as well as the origin of antibiotic-resistance encoding genes in all ecosystems involved in the One Health concept that will be also covered in this issue. Also, studies dealing with the discovery of new antibacterial molecules that are highly needed for treating human and animal infections, in addition to studies involving new means of breaking the cycle of transmission of resistance, are highly encouraged.
Keywords: Resistance, One Health, Environment, Transmission, MDR
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