Researchers have, for the first time, estimated how quickly E. Coli bacteria can spread between people, and one strain moves as fast as swine flu.
Using genomic data from the UK and Norway,
scientists modelled bacterial transmission rates and discovered key differences
between strains.
Their work offers
a new way to monitor and control antibiotic-resistant bacteria in both
communities and hospitals.
New research has
revealed that Escherichia coli (E. coli), a bacterium that normally lives in
the human gut, can spread through populations at a rate comparable to the swine
flu.
The researchers from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, the University
of Oslo, the University of Helsinki, Aalto University in Finland, and their
collaborators have been able to estimate how efficiently one person can pass
gut bacteria to others.
The study, published on November 4 in
Nature Communications, examined three key E. coli strains circulating in the UK
and Norway.
Two of these strains were resistant to several common classes of
antibiotics. They were also the most frequent causes of urinary tract and
bloodstream infections in both countries.
The researchers suggested that better monitoring of these strains
could guide public health responses and help prevent outbreaks of infections
that are difficult to treat.
In the long term, gaining insight into the genetic factors that
help E. coli spread could lead to more targeted therapies and reduce reliance
on broad-spectrum antibiotics.
The approach developed in this study could also be adapted to
investigate other bacterial pathogens and improve strategies for managing
invasive infections.
According to the study, E. coli is one of the leading causes of
infections around the world. While most strains are harmless and normally
inhabit the gut, the bacteria can enter the body through direct contact, such
as kissing or indirect means like shared surfaces, food, or living spaces.
When E. coli moves into areas such as the urinary tract, it can
cause serious illness, including sepsis, especially in people with weakened
immune systems.
Scientists often describe how infectious a pathogen is using the
basic reproduction number, known as R0.
This number estimates how many new cases a single infected person
might cause. It is typically applied to viruses and helps predict whether an
outbreak will expand or decline.
Until now, researchers have been unable to assign an R0 value to
bacteria that normally colonise the gut, since they often live in the body
without triggering illness.
To overcome this, the team combined data from the UK Baby Biome
Study with genomic information from E. coli bloodstream infection surveillance
programs in the UK and Norway, previously compiled by the Wellcome Sanger
Institute.
Using a software platform called ELFI3 (Engine for Likelihood-Free
Inference), the researchers built a new model capable of estimating R0 for the
three major E. coli strains studied.
Their results showed that one particular strain, known as ST131-A,
can spread between people as rapidly as some viruses that have caused global
outbreaks, including the swine flu (H1N1). This is particularly striking
because E. coli is not spread through airborne droplets like flu viruses are.
The two other strains studied, ST131-C1 and ST131-C2, are resistant
to multiple antibiotic classes but spread much more slowly among healthy
individuals. However, in hospitals and other healthcare environments, where
patients are more vulnerable and contact is frequent, these resistant strains
could move through populations much faster.
Understanding R0 for Bacteria:
Assigning an R0 value to bacteria opens the door to a clearer
understanding of how bacterial infections spread.
It also helps identify which strains pose the greatest threat and
could inform public health strategies to better protect people with compromised
immune systems.
Fanni Ojala, M.Sc., co-first author at Aalto University in
Finland, explained: "By having a large amount of systematically collected
data, it was possible to build a simulation model to predict R0 for E. coli. To
our knowledge, this was not just a first for E. coli, but a first for any
bacteria that live in our gut microbiome. Now that we have this model, it could
be possible to apply it to other bacterial strains in the future, allowing us
to understand, track, and hopefully prevent the spread of antibiotic-resistant
infections."
Dr. Trevor Lawley, Group Leader at the Wellcome Sanger Institute
and co-lead of the UK Baby Biome Study, who was not involved in this research,
noted: "E. coli is one of the first bacteria that can be found in a baby's
gut, and in order to understand how our bacteria shape our health, we need to
know where we start -- which is why the UK Baby Biome study is so important. It
is great to see that our UK Baby Biome study data are being used by others to
uncover new insights and methods that will hopefully benefit us all."
The success of this study relied on extensive genomic data from
the UK and Norway, all sequenced at the Wellcome Sanger Institute. This
large-scale data made it possible to identify transmission patterns in detail.
The datasets originated from earlier
studies published in The Lancet Microbe,4,5 which laid the foundation for the
modeling breakthrough achieved in this new research. (ANI)
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