Three anaerobic digestion (AD) processes of waste activated sludge (WAS) were established including the control (mono-WAS), one-stage AD and two-stage AD along with microwave-H2O2 pre-treatment (MWH2O2) to investigate the profiles and drivers of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) distribution concerning co-selection from heavy metals, intI1 and microbial community through qPCR and high-throughput sequencing method. Results showed that MW-H2O2 could reduce the absolute gene copies of all ARGs while increased the relative abundance of most ARGs. After subsequent AD, both total ARGs quantities and relative abundance were enriched while two-stage AD showed some advantages over ARGs abundance reduction. Besides, AD was more effective on the potential pathogens reduction than MW-H2O2. AD could reduce the role of intI1 on the spread of ARGs, while mantel test and procrustes analysis indicated that the variation of ARGs abundance was closely associated with the discrepancy of bacterial community. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.