Antibiotics in urine of the general population: Exposure, health risk assessment, and food factors

Abstract

Diet is known to be one of the main sources from which human intake many environmental contaminants, for example, antibiotics. To determine the effect of dietary factors on antibiotic intake, we identified the levels of antibiotics present in the urine of the general population from two regions of Shanghai. Moreover, we assessed the amount of exposure to these substances and the health risks they posed. There were a total of 18 antibiotics, which were sorted into five categories. Based on the above, we used the Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ) and demographic data to evaluate the effects of food consumption and demographic factors on levels of the antibiotics in urine. The results found that food sourced from animals had a direct relation to the level of veterinary antibiotics or preferred veterinary antibiotics (VAs/PVAs) detected in urine. Those who regularly consumed, for example, meat, milk and eggs, had considerably more VAs/PVAs in their urine compared to those who didn’t. These results demonstrated that animal-derived foods are the main causes of unintentional exposure to antibiotics in human. Our study, therefore, evidenced that more attention must be paid to the residues of unneeded VAs/PVAs derived from animal-sourced food.

Keywords:

• Veterinary antibiotics
• animal-derived food
• unintentional ingestion
• daily exposure dose
• hazard index
• HPLC-MS/MS

Acknowledgments

We thank all participants for their dedication and support.

Disclosure statement

All authors certify that they have no affiliations with or involvement in any organization or entity with any financial interest or non-financial interest in the subject matter or materials discussed in this manuscript.

Data availability statement

All authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article and its supplementary materials.

Additional information

Funding

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 41773121, 11875185 and 11775138), National Key Research and Development Project ( No. 2020YFC1808200) and Key Laboratory of Organic Compound Pollution Control Engineering (MOE), Shanghai University, Shanghai 200444, P. R. China.