Bacteria that have developed immunity to antibiotic drugs pose a large and grow-ing threat to the success of modern medicine. Three studies now find that U.S. rivers have become a major reservoir of such microbes. Reported at the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) meeting this week in Chicago, the studies demonstrate that antibiotic resistance is literally streaming across the nation. Ronald J. Ash of Washburn University in Topeka, Kan., sampled waterborne bacteria from 15 U.S. rivers, including the Mississippi, the Ohio, and the Colorado. He tested the microbes' resistance to ampicillin, a synthetic penicillin.
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