Work

The bidirectional ecological effects of earthworms on antibiotics and resistance genes in soil ecosystems: Health risks under one health framework

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Antibiotics and resistance genes (ARGs), as core components of emerging contaminants, have become widely distributed in agricultural soils worldwide due to excessive use, posing serious threats to ecological and public health under the "One Health" framework. This review comprehensively examines the source-sink dynamics, environmental behavior, and ecological risks of farmland ARGs, with a particular focus on the dual ecological roles of earthworms in antibiotic and ARGs regulation. Earthworms play a key role in degrading antibiotic residues and suppressing ARGs dissemination through soil structure modification, microbial activation, and gut enzymatic catalysis, while simultaneously being vulnerable to toxicity such as growth inhibition, oxidative stress, and gut microbiota disturbance, and may even act as vectors for ARGs spread. Emphasizing the paradox of "pollutant attenuation versus self-toxicity," this work identifies key limitations in current remediation strategies and proposes multidimensional solutions: establishing international monitoring standards, integrating nanotechnology with multi-omics for precision remediation, uncovering pollutant-earthworm-microbiota interaction networks under compound stress, and expanding species diversity research across global ecosystems. Based on the "One Health" concept, this paper proposes a nature-technology synergistic framework centered on earthworms for the ecological prevention and control of soil antibiotic resistance, offering scientific value for safeguarding agricultural safety, ecosystem stability, and breaking the chain of resistance transmission from soil to humans.

Source: Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecoenv.2026.120032