A recent study has been published by Pehrsson et al., (2016) who characterized the bacterial community structure and resistance exchange networks of hundreds of interconnected human fecal and environmental samples from low income Latin American communities. In this study, people who live in rural areas where uncontrolled access to antibiotics and poor sanitation increase the risk of pathogen transmission and and spread of resistances genes. The presence of a real-time surveillance of high-risk environments for identifying the routes for spread of bacteria and resistance genes is a necessity to inform public health interventions according to the study.

References

Pehrsson et al., (2016). Interconnected microbiomes and resistomes in low-income human habitats. Nature 533,212–216. doi:10.1038/nature17672.