Grim Signals of Future Antimicrobial Resistance Found Lurking in Sewage

Dangerous bacteria and other disease-causing microbes are rapidly evolving ways to defy our best antibiotic medications, a phenomenon known as antimicrobial resistance. Humans are inadvertently contributing by overexposing pathogens to our limited defenses.

With drug-resistant bacteria already killing more than 1 million people a year , researchers are seeking clues about the future of these superbugs by examining the world's wastewater.

A new study by an international team of researchers has found that latent antimicrobial resistance is more common than we realised.

The scientists hunted for clues in wastewater from around the world, sifting through 1,240 sewage samples from 351 cities across 111 countries in search of the antimicrobial resistance genes (ARGs) that grant microbes p