ABSTRACT
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in bacteria has emerged as one of the major public health threats in the 21st century. An estimated 700,000 deaths occur annually due to AMR bacteria worldwide. In addition to the use of antimicrobial agents (AMAs) in humans, livestock have also been regarded as a crucial contributor in the overall emergence of AMR problem. However, most of the national and international programs are focused mainly on human pathogens, leaving behind the commensal and beneficial bacteria out of the purview. Besides the development of resistance in common pathogens, AMR in commensal and beneficial bacteria is also worrisome because of its ability to spread the resistant determinants horizontally to other infective bacteria. Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) are integral components of fermented foods, many of which are now increasingly finding use as beneficial probiotics. The role of LAB as reservoir of resistant determinants with transmission potential to pathogenic species is now increasingly acknowledged, thus representing a potential health risk. Various in vitro and in vivo experiments have shown that LAB can play an active role in disseminating resistant determinants across bacterial genus and species. Moreover, it has now been demonstrated that different fermented foods harbors resistance genes, hinting at a potential role these food items may play as a carrier of AMR genes. The 92recent metagenomic approaches have been instrumental in this regard to decipher the antibiotic resistance (AR) genes or the resistome present in these common foods. Shotgun metagenomics is an emerging tool that describes AMR abundance in bacterial communities more accurately than commonly used culture techniques on selected indicator organisms.
