Investigating antibiotic resistance in non-clinical environments

There have been many calls for more information about the natural resistome and these have also highlighted the importance of understanding the soil resistome in the preservation of antibiotics for the treatment of infections. However, to date there have been few studies which have investigated the culturable soil resistome, which highlights the difficulties faced by microbiologists in designing these experiments to produce meaningful data. The World Health Organization definition of resistance is the most fitting to non-clinical environmental studies: antimicrobial resistance is resistance of a microorganism to an antimicrobial medicine to which it was previously sensitive. The ideal investigation of non-clinical environments for antibiotic resistance of clinical relevance would be using standardized guidelines and breakpoints. This review outlines different definitions and methodologies used to understand antibiotic resistance and suggests how this can be performed outside of the clinical environment.