• South East Asia is at high risk of the emergence and spread of antibiotic resistance in humans • The risk assessment framework can help countries identify interventions for maximum impact, although isolated interventions will be inadequate • A comprehensive strategy using the One Health approach is needed to contain antibiotic resistance in South East Asia T he indiscriminate use of antibioti...

Transmission of antibiotic resistance genes may be mediated by a variety of molecular mechanisms, from mobility of small genetic elements to clonal spread. Since 1997, the carbapenem-hydrolyzing enzyme Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase (KPC) has spread in the United States and across the world, mainly via a single K. pneumoniae clone, sequence type 258. By tracking the trail of dissemination ...

Biological systems can share and collectively process information to yield emergent effects, despite inherent noise in communication. While man-made systems often employ intricate structural solutions to overcome noise, the structure of many biological systems is more amorphous. It is not well understood how communication noise may affect the computational repertoire of such groups. To approach...

The emergence of Plasmodium falciparum resistance to widely used antimalarial drugs such as chloroquine (CQ) has made malaria control and treatment much more difficult. This is particularly dramatic for Africa, as few affordable alternatives are available. Drug pressure has been identified as one of the key factors for the emergence and spread of resistance. The contribution of the extensive us...

Landscape genetic studies based on neutral genetic markers have contributed to our understanding of the influence of landscape composition and configuration on gene flow and genetic variation. However, the potential for species to adapt to changing landscapes will depend on how natural selection influences adaptive genetic variation. We demonstrate how landscape resistance models can be combine...

Resistance to oseltamivir, the most widely used influenza antiviral drug, spread to fixation in seasonal influenza A(H1N1) between 2006 and 2009. This sudden rise in resistance seemed puzzling given the low overall level of the oseltamivir usage and the lack of a correlation between local rates of resistance and oseltamivir usage. We used a stochastic simulation model and deterministic approxim...

Antibiotic resistance and its wider implications present us with a growing healthcare crisis. Recent research points to the environment as an important component for the transmission of resistant bacteria and in the emergence of resistant pathogens. However, a deeper understanding of the evolutionary and ecological processes that lead to clinical appearance of resistance genes is still lacking,...

A growing body of literature describes how human pathogens in the environment acquire antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs), a process potentially boosted by selection pressure from antibiotics. Contaminated water and soil may then maintain and spread these antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ARB) and ARGs. A review in this issue of EHP examines strategies for reducing environmental pollution with anti...