A comprehensive review on quinolone contamination in environments: current research progress.

Abstract

Quinolone (QN) antibiotics are a kind of broad-spectrum antibiotics commonly used in the treatment of human and animal diseases. They have the characteristics of strong antibacterial activity, stable metabolism, low production cost, and no cross-resistance with other antibacterial drugs. They are widely used in the world. QN antibiotics cannot be completely digested and absorbed in organisms and are often excreted in urine and feces in the form of original drugs or metabolites, which are widely occurring in surface water, groundwater, aquaculture wastewater, sewage treatment plants, sediments, and soil environment, thus causing environmental pollution. In this paper, the pollution status, biological toxicity, and removal methods of QN antibiotics at home and abroad were reviewed. Literature data showed that QNs and its metabolites had serious ecotoxicity. Meanwhile, the spread of drug resistance induced by continuous emission of QNs should not be ignored. In addition, adsorption, chemical oxidation, photocatalysis, and microbial removal of QNs are often affected by a variety of experimental conditions, and the removal is not complete, so it is necessary to combine a variety of processes to efficiently remove QNs in the future.