Abstract

The increase of antibiotic resistance in clinical settings but also in wastewater treatment plants is of increasing concern to human health. The goal of this chapter is to investigate the potential of different tertiary wastewater treatment technologies as to the reduction of the amount of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and genes in wastewater effluents. Molecular- and cultivation-based techniques are reported in the current scientific literature for the analysis of bacterial communities and especially opportunistic pathogenically bacteria in wastewater and after different levels of disinfection processes.

Additionally, the presence of antibiotic resistance genes (vanA, mecA, ampC, ermB, blaVIM, tetM) and phenotypic resistance to ciprofloxacin, cefuroxime, trimethoprim, ofloxacin, and tetracycline were analyzed to characterize the impact of different wastewater treatments and advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) on the effluent antibiotic resistance patterns. The examination of the application of advanced oxidation and photo-driven technologies showed significant discrepancy among the removal of different bacterial families as well as bacterial species in wastewater.

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