We are sorry that we have not been wasting our time for the past thirteen years.
It
would be great to wake up one morning and find no risk to humans from antibiotic use on livestock
But everything continues to point to antibiotic use in
livestock farming as a serious threat to human health.
The full paper can be found here
Historical Zoonoses and Other Changes in Host Tropism ofStaphylococcus aureus, Identified by Phylogenetic Analysis of a Population Dataset
Abstract
Background
Staphylococcus aureus exhibits tropisms to many distinct animal hosts. While spillover events can occur wherever there is an interface between host species, changes in host tropism only occur with the establishment of sustained transmission in the new host species, leading to clonal expansion. Although the genomic variation underpinning adaptation in S. aureusgenotypes infecting bovids and poultry has been well characterized the frequency of switches from one host to another remains obscure. We sought to identify sustained switches in host tropism in the S. aureus population, both anthroponotic and zoonotic, and their distribution over the species phylogeny.
Methodologies/Results
We have used a sample of 3042 isolates, representing 696 distinct MLST genotypes, from a well-established database (www.mlst.net). Using an empirical parsimony approach (AdaptML) we have investigated the distribution of switches in host association between both human and non-human (henceforth referred to as animal) hosts. We reconstructed a credible description of past events in the form of a phylogenetic tree; the nodes and leaves of which are statistically associated with either human or animal habitats, estimated from extant host-association and the degree of sequence divergence between genotypes. We identified 15 likely historical switching events; 13 anthroponoses and two zoonoses. Importantly, we identified two human-associated clade candidates (CC25 and CC59) that have arisen from animal-associated ancestors; this demonstrates that a human-specific lineage can emerge from an animal host. We also highlight novel rabbit-associated genotypes arising from a human ancestor.
Conclusions
S. aureus is an organism with the capacity to switch into and adapt to novel hosts, even after long periods of isolation in a single host species. Based on this evidence, animal-adapted S. aureus lineages exhibiting resistance to antibiotics must be considered a major threat to public health, as they can adapt to the human population.
Citation: Shepheard MA, Fleming VM, Connor TR, Corander J, Feil EJ, et al. (2013) Historical Zoonoses and Other Changes in Host Tropism of Staphylococcus aureus, Identified by Phylogenetic Analysis of a Population Dataset. PLoS ONE 8(5): e62369. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0062369
Editor: Paul J. Planet, Columbia University, United States of America
Received: August 8, 2012; Accepted: March 21, 2013; Published: May 7, 2013
Copyright: © 2013 Shepheard et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
