People are infected by bacteria that, after contacting heavy metals, develop drug-resistant traits.
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are a growing cause of death worldwide. They killed roughly 1.27 million people in 2019, according to the most recent worldwide analysis. One obvious culprit has been our overuse of antimicrobial drugs, which pressures populations of bacteria to evolve better defenses against them.
In December 2021 researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison reported that people with the highest levels of lead in their urine, especially those living in urban areas, were more likely to have antibiotic-resistant bacteria in their bodies, even after accounting for other factors that could drive up resistance. Their results, published in Environmental Epidemiology, are among the first to show this link within the human body.
The link between heavy metals and antibiotic-resistant bacteria is still a relatively new area of research, and untangling their relationship within the human body will require more studies that follow participants over time, says Meghan Davis, a professor of environmental health and engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
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