Articlenpj antimicrobials and resistance2026
Biofilm removal in hospital sink drains drives unintended surges in antibiotic resistance.
Article in npj antimicrobials and resistance, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Data-driven exploration of electronic nose technology to differentiate bacteria in blood cultures under biofilm-promoting conditions.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Comparative Biofilmomics of Antimicrobial-ResistantAnimals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Review
- Signatures of the maternal-infant oral microbiome in contexts of imprisonment and social vulnerability.Frontiers in dental medicine · 2026Article
- Insights into the mechanisms of infection transmission via inanimate surfaces.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The prevalence and proliferation of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria is considered one of the critical issues of our time. Wastewater is a habitat for complex microbial communities where bacteria share antimicrobial-resistance genes through horizontal gene transfer. Hospital wastewater plumbing systems are an ideal reservoir for environmental and pathogenic bacteria to interface and exchange antimicrobial-resistance genes. Replacement of contaminated plumbing may be the most intuitive and widely deployed response to the detection and colonization of highly-resistant potentially pathogenic bacteria in hospital sink drains. In this study, we analyzed sink-drain biofilms from six intensive-care patient rooms using shotgun metagenomic sequencing and microbial culture. We show an evident shift in biofilm community structure toward increased abundance of Enterobacteriaceae following plumbing replacement. Higher resistome load and abundance of clinically relevant resistance and typically encountered mobile genes in the newly replaced plumbing was also observed. Taken together, these finding suggest that exchanging contaminated plumbing for new plumbing may actually have the unexpected consequence of increased abundance of Enterobacterales and antimicrobial-resistance genes in the sink drains. Disruption of preexisting complex environmental biofilms may result in an unintended microbial population shifts and a potential subsequent increase in the amount of antimicrobial-resistant Enterobacterales which are targeted for elimination.
Identifiers
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.