SAEDNEWS: Recent studies show that even clouds carry drug-resistant bacteria.
According to SAEDNEWS, A team of Canadian and French researchers has found that clouds in the sky also carry drug-resistant bacteria and transport them over long distances.
Florent Rossi, the lead author of the study, said in a phone interview: “These bacteria usually live on the surfaces of vegetation, such as leaves, or in soil. We discovered that they are carried into the atmosphere by wind and can travel long distances across the Earth at high altitudes inside clouds.”
The discovery was published last month in the journal Science of The Total Environment. Researchers from Laval University in Quebec City and Clermont Auvergne University in central France searched for antibiotic resistance genes in bacteria found in cloud samples.
The samples were collected from an atmospheric research station located 1,465 meters above sea level on the summit of Puy de Dôme, an extinct volcano in central France, between September 2019 and October 2021. Analysis of the collected cloud water showed that it contained between 330 and more than 30,000 bacteria per milliliter of cloud water, with an average of about 8,000 bacteria per milliliter. Researchers also identified 29 subgroups of antibiotic resistance genes in these bacteria.
Drug resistance occurs when bacteria are exposed to antibiotics and gradually develop immunity to them over generations. Health authorities have repeatedly warned that these adaptations are becoming a major global health concern, as described in the study, making some bacterial infections more difficult and, in some cases, impossible to treat. This problem is growing as antibiotic use in healthcare and agriculture continues to increase.
The study did not provide any conclusions about the potential health effects of spreading antibiotic-resistant bacteria through the atmosphere. It estimated that only 5 to 50 percent of the detected organisms were alive and potentially active, but Rossi said the possible risks are low.
He explained: “The atmosphere is a very stressful environment for bacteria, and most of those we found were environmental bacteria that are less harmful to humans. Therefore, people should not be afraid of walking in the rain. It is also unclear whether these genes can be transferred to other bacteria. However, monitoring the atmosphere could help identify sources of drug-resistant bacteria, similar to wastewater testing used for COVID-19 and other pathogens, in order to limit their spread.”
