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A Model of the Number of Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria in Rivers

The large reservoir of antibiotic resistant bacteria in raw and treated water supplies is a matter of public health concern. Currently, the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring Systems, a collaborative effort of the Centers for Disease Control, the US Department of Agriculture, and the US Food and Drug Administration, does not monitor antimicrobial resistance in surface waters. Given the serious nature of antibiotic resistance in clinical settings, and the likelihood that antibiotic resistant bacteria can be transmitted to humans from large environmental reservoirs via drinking water, explanations for the distribution of antibiotic resistant bacteria and tools for studying this distribution must be found. Here we focus on mathematical modeling of cultivable bacteria in a river, which will be used to study the distribution of antibiotic resistant bacteria in the environment. We consider both antibiotic resistant and non-antibiotic resistant bacteria in the model, and, taking into account the strong correlation between land use and antibiotic resistant bacteria in rivers, we include a function for the influx of bacteria into the river from the shore. We simulate the model for two different time scales and show that if there is too many bacteria from the land entering the river, the river entirely fills with antibiotic resistant bacteria, while less frequent influxes allows time for the bacteria to lose the antibiotic resistant gene. This mathematically verifies that reduction in antibiotic use near the banks of rivers, will reduce the counts of antibiotic resistant bacteria in rivers.