Abstract
The emergence and rapid dissemination of CPBs make the use of carbapenems in medicine impossible and place in situations of therapeutic failures. The dissemination of carbapenemase encoding genes (CEG) within bacteria is favored by their presence onto mobile genetic element in particular plasmids. Previously neglected, the environment, and in particular the aquatic environment, is now considered to be an actor in its own right in theantimicrobial resistance cycle, even if its role remains to be defined. Thus, the isolation of CPBs in urban waters suggests that urban water environments constitute a reservoir for CEGs. In order to study carbapenem resistance in urban water environments, two approaches were implemented. The first one consisted in the study of carbapenem resistance at the scale of two urban territories subjected to different anthropic pressures : three agglomerations in Ivory Coast and a river in the city of Montpellier. The presence and abundance of GCCs seem to be strongly correlated with the level of anthropization of the water environments considered, suggesting that water environments constitute at least a "relay" for human-origin CPBs. Therefore, the study of antimicrobial resistance in urban waters contaminated by Humans consitutes a tool for epidemiological surveillance. In a second step, the capacities of dissemination and persistence of GCCs carried by bacterial isolates from urban water were more particularly studied. These are two Escherichia coli carrying an IncX-3 plasmid encoding the blaNDM-5 gene and two Aeromonas hydrophila KPC-2 carrying IncP-6 plasmids. IncX-3 plasmids have certainly contributed to the dissemination of the blaNDM-5 gene in Enterobacterales, bacteria of the genus Aeromonas could constitute transient hosts for IncP-6 plasmids.This study contributes to the description of the epidemiological cycles of carbapenem resistance, an approach to be developed in the context of the global fight against antibiotic resistance "One health".