ArticleNature microbiology2022
Drinking water chlorination has minor effects on the intestinal flora and resistomes of Bangladeshi children.
Article in Nature microbiology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
What it found
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed.
- Water, sanitation, handwashing, and nutritional interventions can reduce child antibiotic use: evidence from Bangladesh and Kenya.Nature communications · 2025Trial
- Drinking Water Chlorination Impact on Fecal Carriage of Extended-Spectrum Beta-Lactamase-ProducingEnvironmental health perspectives · 2022Trial
- Drinking water source and the gut microbiome of 5-year-old children: findings from Gen3G birth cohort.American journal of epidemiology · 2026Article
- Chlorinated drinking water exposure enriches antimicrobial resistance pathways in the infant gut microbiome: a randomized trial.Communications medicine · 2026Article
- Metagenomic strain tracking reveals patterns of bacterial spread and the impact of water chlorination.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Environmental exposures associated with the gut microbiome and resistome of pregnant women and children in Northwest Ecuador.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Risk factors associated with community colonization of extended-spectrum cephalosporin-resistant Enterobacterales from an antibiotic resistance in communities and hospitals (ARCH) study, Guatemala.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Environmental Exposures and the Human Gut Resistome in Northwest Ecuador.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2025Article
- Contaminated drinking water facilitates Escherichia coli strain-sharing within households in urban informal settlements.Nature microbiology · 2025Article
- Pathways through which water, sanitation, hygiene, and nutrition interventions reduce antibiotic use in young children: a mediation analysis of a cohort nested within a cluster-randomized trial.EClinicalMedicine · 2025Article
- Pathways through which water, sanitation, hygiene, and nutrition interventions reduce antibiotic use in young children: a mediation analysis of a cluster-randomized trial.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2024Article
- Association between chlorine-treated drinking water, the gut microbiome, and enteric pathogen burden in young children in Haiti: An observational study.International journal of infectious diseases : IJID : official publication of the International Society for Infectious Diseases · 2024Observational
- Bacterial strain sharing between humans, animals, and the environment among urban households.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2024Article
- Evaluating human exposure to antibiotic resistance genes.Biosafety and health · 2024Article
- Exposure to chlorinated drinking water alters the murine fecal microbiota.The Science of the total environment · 2024Article
- Evaluating the relationship between community water and sanitation access and the global burden of antibiotic resistance: an ecological study.The Lancet. Microbe · 2023Article
- Water chlorination and intestinal microbiota.Nature reviews. Gastroenterology & hepatology · 2022Article
- Gut-bladder axis in recurrent UTI.Nature microbiology · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
16 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Healthy development of the gut microbiome provides long-term health benefits. Children raised in countries with high infectious disease burdens are frequently exposed to diarrhoeal pathogens and antibiotics, which perturb gut microbiome assembly. A recent cluster-randomized trial leveraging >4,000 child observations in Dhaka, Bangladesh, found that automated water chlorination of shared taps effectively reduced child diarrhoea and antibiotic use. In this substudy, we leveraged stool samples collected from 130 children 1 year after chlorine doser installation to examine differences between treatment and control children's gut microbiota. Water chlorination was associated with increased abundance of several bacterial genera previously linked to improved gut health; however, we observed no effects on the overall richness or diversity of taxa. Several clinically relevant antibiotic resistance genes were relatively more abundant in the gut microbiome of treatment children, possibly due to increases in Enterobacteriaceae. While further studies on the long-term health impacts of drinking chlorinated water would be valuable, we conclude that access to chlorinated water did not substantially impact child gut microbiome development in this setting, supporting the use of chlorination to increase global access to safe drinking water.
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