Jean Lesne

Antimicrobial Susceptibility of Autochthonous Aquatic Vibrio cholerae in Haiti

We investigated the antimicrobial susceptibility of 50 environmental isolates of Vibrio cholerae non-O1/non-O139 collected in surface waters in Haiti in July 2012, during an active cholera outbreak. A panel of 16 antibiotics was tested on the isolates using the disk diffusion method and PCR detection of seven resistance-associated genes (strA/B, sul1/2, ermA/B, and mefA). All isolates were susceptible to amoxicillin-clavulanic acid, cefotaxime, imipenem, ciprofloxacin, norfloxacin, amikacin, and gentamicin. Nearly a quarter (22.0%) of the isolates were susceptible to all 16 antimicrobials tested and only 8.0% of the isolates (n = 4) were multidrug-resistant. The highest proportions of resistant isolates were observed for sulfonamide (70.0%), amoxicillin (12.0%), and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (10.0%). One strain was resistant to erythromycin and one to doxycycline, two antibiotics used to treat cholera in Haiti. Among the 50 isolates, 78% possessed at least two resistance-associated genes, and the genes sul1, ermA, and strB were detected in all four multidrug-resistant isolates. Our results clearly indicate that the autochthonous population of V. cholerae non-O1/non-O139 found in surface waters in Haiti shows antimicrobial patterns different from that of the outbreak strain. The presence in the Haitian aquatic environment of V. cholerae non-O1/non-O139 with reduced susceptibility or resistance to antibiotics used in human medicine may constitute a mild public health threat.

Antimicrobial Susceptibility among Urban Wastewater and Wild Shellfish Isolates of Non-O1/Non-O139 Vibrio Cholerae from La Rance Estuary (Brittany, France)

The early 2000s marked the end of the Golden age of the antibiotics and the beginning of the awareness on the potential threat to human health due to the dissemination of antimicrobial resistance. As a base-line study, we investigated the antimicrobial susceptibility of 99 strains of non-O1/non-O139 Vibrio cholerae isolated from wastewater and shellfish in 2000/2001 within La Rance estuary (Brittany, France). All isolates were susceptible to amoxicillin-clavulanic acid, cefotaxime, imipenem, chloramphenicol, nalidixic acid, ciprofloxacin, norfloxacin, amikacin, gentamicin, tetracycline, doxycycline, trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, and erythromycin. The only resistances were to streptomycin, sulfonamides and ampicillin: 54.6% of the isolates had acquired resistance to at least one antimicrobial agent among them and only six isolates from cockles were multidrug resistant. On the basis of the distribution of a limited selection of resistance associated genes, our study shows that V. cholerae can constitute an environmental reservoir for these genes. However, none of our isolates harbored integron. This result casts doubt on the capacity of non-O1/non-O139 V. cholerae to acquire resistance-associated genes in such context, and on its potential role of indicator of the dissemination of antimicrobial resistance in the aquatic environment.

Protéger la santé à l’ère de l’anthropocène*

Une commission de specialistes constituee principalement d’universitaires anglo-saxons du Royaume-Uni et des Etats-Unis, avec une ouverture internationale sur le Canada, le Chili, le Kenya, la Chine, la Malaisie et le Pakistan, a produit en ligne en juillet 2015 un rapport publie dans The Lancet en novembre 2015. Ce travail, intitule « Protection de la sante humaine a l’epoque anthropocene », finance en partie par la Fondation Rockefeller, est complementaire de celui d’une autre [...]