In a world filling with more and more microplastics, research which demonstrates bacterial antibiotic resistance through biofilms on these microplastics should get everyone’s attention. As the world has turned to depending on plastic products for so many aspects of daily life, the tiny debris of these plastics rub off and spread practically everywhere. As these microplastics have been found in countless environments including inside our own bodies, scientists work feverishly to understand their impact. In this study, these microplastics encouraged a surprising mechanism in bacteria.
Boston University researchers were quite surprised to find adding microplastics to a variety of bacteria in their lab consistently created highly resistant colonies of these bacteria. Multiple different bacterial species were able to become drug resistant. Not only were they resistant to an antibiotic, but highly resistant to multiple antibiotics. This resistance continued in most cases after the microplastics were removed.
The prior dogma of antibiotic therapy was that drug resistance grew out of excessive antibiotic usage for patients and agricultural usages. Scientists previously believed that the pressure of antibiotics would encourage bacteria which had drug resistance mutations to flourish in place of antibiotic sensitive bacteria. Now they are concerned about this potentially even bigger issue as we see microplastics continue to accumulate in our environment.
The growth of drug resistance bacteria on microplastics could be especially problematic in lower income communities or where people groups are displaced and living in areas where trash has accumulated. This plastic trash could become a prime target of bacteria where unsanitary living conditions put people and the trash in close proximity. If these bacteria become drug resistant, those living nearby could contract life threatening infections for which antibiotics had little to no effect.
This superpower endowed by microplastics appear to arise from the bacteria’s ability to form biofilms on the microplastics. First, the bacteria can easily adhere to the surface of the microplastics since the plastic repels water and provides a solid surface for the bacteria to attach. From there, the bacteria are apparently triggered to grow this biofilm over themselves and the plastic.
We have long known about biofilms in human infections such as artificial joints and some chronic infections like Lyme. The biofilms are composed of a variety of proteins, carbohydrates, and other bacterial derived substances which form a sort of insulation around the bacteria. Once this insulation layer has accumulated, the bacteria is protected from antibiotics reaching their cell membranes. The antibiotic just can’t get to the bacteria under the protective blanket.
Scientists are working to better understand how this process works and what real world impacts it could have on both individuals and society as a whole. If microplastics fuel a spreading of biofilm empowered resistant bacteria, we need to respond in two different ways. First, we need an arsenal of therapies to combat the plethora of possibly resistant bacteria on microplastics already present in the environment. Second, we need to evaluate our daily interactions with plastics and consider how to lessen our dependence on them.
Thankfully, functional and integrative medicine already has some tools against biofilms such as various biofilm disruptor therapies we use for chronic infections like Lyme or Candida. While helping our patients live healthier, more abundant lives for years, these therapies have helped eradicate chronic infections that conventional medicine could not handle. As scientists learn more about the effects of microplastics on bacterial drug resistance, we hope to see these same therapies as effective against this microplastic-endowed bacterial superpower.
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Original Article:
Neila Gross, Johnathan Muhvich, Carly Ching, Bridget Gomez, Evan Horvath, Yanina Nahum, Muhammad H. Zaman. Effects of microplastic concentration, composition, and size on Escherichia coli biofilm-associated antimicrobial resistance. Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 2025; DOI: 10.1128/aem.02282-24
Thanks to Science Daily:
Boston University. “Microplastics could be fueling antibiotic resistance.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 11 March 2025. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/03/250311121511.htm>.
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.
