March 25, 2026 | 06:20 pm
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Recent research suggests that droughts can increase the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, as the impact of climate change continues to grow. A study published in the journal Nature Microbiology on March 23, 2026, revealed a link between increasingly dry environmental conditions and rising antibiotic resistance in microorganisms.
The research was carried out on soil microbes. The results showed that drought conditions tend to favor microorganisms that can withstand exposure to antibiotics. Additionally, several resistance genes found in soil bacteria were also identified in resistant pathogens taken from hospital patients. The researchers explained that the ability of bacteria to exchange genetic materials enables this resistance to transfer from the environment to the human body.
"No place is immune," stated Dianne Newman, the lead researcher and a biologist at Caltech, as quoted from a report by Live Science on Wednesday, March 25, 2026. "If you have a pathogen arise in one part of the world, it very quickly spreads, so this is something of concern regardless of where you live," she added.
Antibiotic resistance itself has become a global health issue. The World Health Organization (WHO) noted that antibiotic-resistant pathogens directly caused around 1.27 million deaths per year in 2019, and contributed to millions of other deaths. In the context of evolution, microbes naturally produce antibiotics to combat other microbes, making the soil one of the main arenas for such competition.
Researchers analyzed various metagenomic databases from different parts of the world and found that genes responsible for antibiotic synthesis appeared more frequently after dry periods and decreased when conditions became more humid. This pattern was consistently observed in various ecosystems, ranging from agricultural land to forests and wetlands. "You see this in croplands, in grasslands, in forests, in wetlands, in the U.S., in China, in Switzerland," Newman said.
Laboratory experiments revealed that drought increases the concentration of antibiotics in soil through water evaporation. This causes susceptible bacteria to temporarily die off while resistant bacteria thrive. These findings confirm that environmental pressure accelerates the selection of antibiotic-resistant microbes.
Globally, data analysis from hospitals revealed that regions experiencing higher levels of drought tended to report more cases of antibiotic-resistant pathogens. These findings remained true even after socioeconomic factors were taken into account. "This is not the time for governments to stop funding scientific research and drug discovery," Newman stated.
The researchers assessed that ongoing global warming has the potential to expand dry areas, thus accelerating the spread of antibiotic resistance. Therefore, in addition to efforts to mitigate climate change, there is a need for an increased rapid diagnosis in healthcare facilities, the use of combination antibiotic therapy, and greater support for the development of new drugs.
Read: BRIN Attributes Severe Dry Season Across Indonesia to Super El Nino and IOD+
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