[Impact of the migratory movements in the bacterial resistance to antibiotics]

Spain is among the main receptor countries for immigration; but there are few studies available which target antibiotic-resistance in immigrants. Our objective was to review the current knowledge on the impact of antibiotic resistance in immigrants compared with the prevalence in the autochthonous population.

A comprehensive bibliographical search was performed to detect published works in the 1998-2013 period. Common keywords were: resistance; immigrant, and Spain; particular keywords were: Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, or Enterobacteriaceae and travellers in each topic.

Global percentage of resistant M. tuberculosis strains was 2.5-4 times more frequent in immigrant population than native population. The proportion of MDR strains was also higher in adult and infant immigrant populations (2,5% and 4,5% respectively) than in native population (0,1%-0% respectively). Known cases of gonorrhoea among immigrant population represented 28%, proceeding from geographical areas with high resistance to macrolide (30%) and cephalosporins (20%). This data reveals the possibility of dissemination of untreatable N. gonorrhoeae strains. The detection of multidrug-resistant Enterobacteriaceae in Spaniard travellers visiting countries with high rates of antibiotic resistance was increased from 7.9% to 17.9% (even 37.4% in native travellers from India).

The different rates of antibiotic resistance between native and immigrant populations in the studied models in this review, revealed as the migration can affect to emergence and re-emergence of infection diseases, but also the potential spreading of untreatable microorganisms.