Genomic epidemiology ofCampylobacter jejuniassociated with asymptomatic pediatric infection in the Peruvian Amazon

Abstract

Campylobacter is the leading bacterial cause of gastroenteritis worldwide and its incidence is especially high in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). Disease epidemiology in LMICs is different compared to high income countries like the USA or in Europe. Children in LMICs commonly have repeated and chronic infections even in the absence of symptoms, which can lead to deficits in early childhood development. In this study, we sequenced and characterized C. jejuni (n=62) from a longitudinal cohort study of children under the age of 5 with and without diarrheal symptoms, and contextualized them within a global C. jejuni genome collection. Epidemiological differences in disease presentation were reflected in the genomes, specifically by the absence of some of the most common global disease-causing lineages. As in many other countries, poultry-associated strains were a major source of human infection but almost half of local disease cases (15 of 31) were attributable to genotypes that are rare outside of Peru. Asymptomatic infection was not limited to a single (or few) human adapted lineages but resulted from phylogenetically divergent strains suggesting an important role for host factors in the cryptic epidemiology of campylobacteriosis in LMICs.

A two-hit epistasis model prevents core genome disharmony in recombining bacteria

“…All novel genome sequences (n=475) generated for use in this study are available on NCBI BioProjects PRJNA689604 and PRJEB11972. These were augmented with 498 previously published genomes and accession numbers for all genomes can be found in Data S4 16,27,31,42,[53][54][55][56][57] .…”