A Cross Sectional Study of Respiratory and Allergy Status in Dairy Workers

Carmona, Jose; deMarcken, Marine; Trinh, Pauline; Frisbie, Lauren; Ramirez, Vickie; Palmández, Pablo; Vedal, Sverre; Sack, Coralynn; Rabinowitz, Peter

doi:10.1080/1059924x.2023.2171522

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 23 publications

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“…Sample collection and study activities were approved by the University of Washington Institutional Review Board under STUDY00000042. Study protocols have been previously described [13].…”

Section: Study Participant Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Differences in gut metagenomes between dairy workers and community controls: a cross-sectional study

Trinh

Roberts

Rabinowitz

et al. 2023

Preprint

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As a nexus of routine antibiotic use and zoonotic pathogen presence, the livestock farming environment is a potential hotspot for the emergence of zoonotic diseases and antibiotic resistant bacteria. Livestock can further facilitate disease transmission by serving as intermediary hosts for pathogens as they undergo evolution prior to a spillover event. In light of this, we are interested in characterizing the microbiome and resistome of dairy workers, whose exposure to the livestock farming environment places them at risk for facilitating community transmission of antibiotic resistant genes and emerging zoonotic diseases. Using shotgun sequencing, we investigated differences in the taxonomy, diversity and gene presence of the human gut microbiome of 10 dairy farm workers and 6 community controls, supplementing these samples with additional publicly available gut metagenomes. We observed greater abundance of tetracycline resistance genes and prevalence of cephamycin resistance genes in dairy workers' metagenomes, and lower average gene diversity. We also found evidence of commensal organism association with plasmid-mediated tetracycline resistance genes in both dairy workers and community controls (including Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, Ligilactobacillus animalis, and Simiaoa sunii). However, we did not find significant differences in the prevalence of resistance genes or virulence factors overall, nor differences in the taxonomic composition of dairy worker and community control metagenomes. This study presents the first metagenomics analysis of United States dairy workers, providing insights into potential risks of exposure to antibiotics and pathogens in animal farming environments. Previous metagenomic studies of livestock workers in China and Europe have reported increased abundance and carriage of antibiotic resistance genes in livestock workers. While our investigation found no strong evidence for differences in the abundance or carriage of antibiotic resistance genes and virulence factors between dairy worker and community control gut metagenomes, we did observe patterns in the abundance of tetracycline resistance genes and the prevalence of cephamycin resistance genes that is consistent with previous work.

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“…Sample collection and study activities were approved by the University of Washington Institutional Review Board under STUDY00000042. Study protocols have been previously described [13].…”

Section: Study Participant Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Differences in gut metagenomes between dairy workers and community controls: a cross-sectional study

Trinh

Roberts

Rabinowitz

et al. 2023

Preprint

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

A cross-sectional comparison of gut metagenomes between dairy workers and community controls

Trinh,

Teichman,

Roberts

et al. 2024

BMC Genomics

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Background As a nexus of routine antibiotic use and zoonotic pathogen presence, the livestock farming environment is a potential hotspot for the emergence of zoonotic diseases and antibiotic resistant bacteria. Livestock can further facilitate disease transmission by serving as intermediary hosts for pathogens before a spillover event. In light of this, we aimed to characterize the microbiomes and resistomes of dairy workers, whose exposure to the livestock farming environment places them at risk for facilitating community transmission of antibiotic resistant genes and emerging zoonotic diseases. Results Using shotgun sequencing, we investigated differences in the taxonomy, diversity and gene presence of 10 dairy farm workers and 6 community controls’ gut metagenomes, contextualizing these samples with additional publicly available gut metagenomes. We found no significant differences in the prevalence of resistance genes, virulence factors, or taxonomic composition between the two groups. The lack of statistical significance may be attributed, in part, to the limited sample size of our study or the potential similarities in exposures between the dairy workers and community controls. We did, however, observe patterns warranting further investigation including greater abundance of tetracycline resistance genes and prevalence of cephamycin resistance genes as well as lower average gene diversity (even after accounting for differential sequencing depth) in dairy workers’ metagenomes. We also found evidence of commensal organism association with tetracycline resistance genes in both groups (including Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, Ligilactobacillus animalis, and Simiaoa sunii). Conclusions This study highlights the utility of shotgun metagenomics in examining the microbiomes and resistomes of livestock workers, focusing on a cohort of dairy workers in the United States. While our study revealed no statistically significant differences between groups in taxonomy, diversity and gene presence, we observed patterns in antibiotic resistance gene abundance and prevalence that align with findings from previous studies of livestock workers in China and Europe. Our results lay the groundwork for future research involving larger cohorts of dairy and non-dairy workers to better understand the impact of occupational exposure to livestock farming on the microbiomes and resistomes of workers.

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A Cross Sectional Study of Respiratory and Allergy Status in Dairy Workers

Cited by 2 publications

References 23 publications

Differences in gut metagenomes between dairy workers and community controls: a cross-sectional study

Differences in gut metagenomes between dairy workers and community controls: a cross-sectional study

A cross-sectional comparison of gut metagenomes between dairy workers and community controls

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