Antimicrobials and Antimicrobial Resistance in Animal Ecosystem within One Health Framework

Dear Colleagues,

Since the discovery of antimicrobial agents, they have been the most commonly prescribed drugs in livestock industry and have proven to be exceptionally efficacious against a broad range of bacterial populations. It is estimated that the food-producing animals consume more than 70% of antimicrobial agents produced worldwide. In the livestock industry, antimicrobial agents have four potential uses: (1) treatment of bacterial infections, (2) controlling infectious diseases, (3) prevention of infectious diseases, and (4) as a growth promotor. This high exposure to antimicrobial agents particularly when used below therapeutic concentrations provides a great opportunity for antimicrobial resistance to develop. Antibiotic resistance has become a growing global crisis due to the emergence of multi-drug resistance pathogens to clinically important antimicrobial agents. Traditionally, the impact of antimicrobial treatment on the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria has focused only on pathogenic bacteria using culture-based methods and antimicrobial susceptibility tests. The recent advancement in culture independent techniques and next generation technologies (e.g., whole genome sequencing) has provided new opportunities for the detailed genomic characterization of resistant strains as well as detection of the presence or absence of antibiotic resistance genes and mobile genetic elements across bacterial genomes. Recently, many studies have begun to investigate the association between antimicrobial use in livestock and the development of antimicrobial resistance across a wider range of commensal populations at the microbial ecosystem-level. When antimicrobial agents are given to the animals, therapeutically or prophylactically, they eliminate the susceptible bacterial populations including commensal microbiota, and leave behind resistant populations that continue to grow and spread among other microbial populations in the surrounding ecosystem. While there is a clear association between the antimicrobial use and development of antimicrobial resistance and emergence of antimicrobial resistance genes, this association is impacted by multiple confounding factors (e.g., pathogen–host interactions, pathogen–drug interactions, rate of mutation, rate of transmission, cross-resistance, and co-selection of resistance to unrelated drugs).

This Special Issue welcomes manuscripts describing the current use of antimicrobial agents in animals and their role in the emergence of antimicrobial resistance. This includes research on evidence-based approaches for the molecular characterization of antimicrobial resistance mechanisms in animals and the distribution of resistance genes among members of commensal microbiota as well as the phenotypic and genotypic characterization of resistant bacteria. Other approaches such as discovery or development of new drugs, antimicrobial peptides or non-antibiotic alternative or development of new diagnostic methods for targeting virulence determinants to face this challenge are also welcome.

The eligible types of articles for this Special Issue include original research articles, review articles, meta-analyses, opinions, and perspectives.

Dr. Mohamed Zeineldin
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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• antimicrobial
• antimicrobial resistance
• antimicrobial resistance genes
• animals
• microbiome
• genomics
• one health