Infliction of Antibiotic Resistance in the Environment: Challenges and Outlook

Abstract

The spread of antibiotic resistance has been a dire worriment for humanity and is responsible for over 5.3 million deaths annually across the globe. With the emergence of new drugs, bacteria tend to procure various mechanisms of resistance to survive. The resistance mechanisms and the genes associated with them have become ubiquitous and have influenced the environmental resistome, thereby diminishing the effective capabilities of treating bacterial infections. This chapter will address the pervasiveness of antibiotic resistance in soil and water environments, its evolution, transmission, and understanding of the resistance crisis. Potent steps must be taken in terms of the spread of resistance genes in environmental bacteria into human pathogens, to decrease the spread of resistant bacteria to people and via wastes and water, to minimize the levels of antibiotic consumption, and to improve the management of waste containing antibiotic residues. This chapter will also provide a perspective on methods of surveillance of the factors contributing to resistance and identifying elements of artificial intelligence to alleviate the transmission and resistance of antimicrobials. © 2025 selection and editorial matter, Arti Gupta and Ram Prasad.