Dr. Troy Skwor, Assistant Professor and Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program Coordinator in UWM’s Department of Biomedical Sciences, will present a talk about his work entitled, “Comparing antimicrobial resistance between clinical and wastewater isolates: A local and global perspective.” Read more about Dr. Skwor’s work here.

According to the World Health Organization, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) continues to pose one of the top 10 greatest threats to global health, already claiming 1,270,000 lives a year. One approach to combating resistance is to better understand the interconnectedness of human, animal and environmental habitats on the emergence and evolution of antibiotic resistance. The purpose of our study was to 1) Determine if wastewater treatment processes impact the prevalence of AMR; 2) Determine the health risk associated with post-chlorinated wastewater E. coli populations by comparing to clinical E. coli populations; 3) Identify the bacterial populations within post-chlorinated wastewater that exhibit resistance to the critically important antibiotics: carbapenems and 3^rd generation cephalosporins; 4) Assess AMR from a One Health and Global Health perspective using Aeromonas spp. as an indicator species. To address the last purpose, we performed a systematic review and meta-analysis that screened 7,382 articles and extracted AMR data from 221 published articles (14 agricultural, 82 seafood, 87 clinical, 8 drinking water, 19 surface water, and 11 wastewater studies) that met our inclusion criteria. Together, our findings highlight the pros and cons of wastewater treatment and provide support for its use as wastewater-based epidemiology to track AMR patterns. Lastly, we identified that socioeconomic factors strongly correlated with AMR, advocating for global support of basic infrastructure to help combat AMR.

The presentation will begin at 4:00 PM in Lapham Hall N101. The talk is preceded by an informal reception from 3:45 – 4:00 PM.