Robert Koch-Institut, Burgstr. 37, 38855 Wernigerode, Germany.
Int J Med Microbiol. 2011 Dec;301(8):614-8. doi: 10.1016/j.ijmm.2011.09.007. Epub 2011 Oct 8.
Tracing the spatial spread of pathogens is a key objective of molecular infectious disease epidemiology. Accordingly, a wide range of genotyping approaches have been used to monitor the dissemination of Staphylococcus aureus strains, from localized outbreaks to global spread. We provide a critical review of available methods, revealing that molecular markers currently in use for typing S. aureus acquire changes so slowly that they monitor evolutionary change over timescales that are largely irrelevant to epidemiology. Moreover, the more variable markers frequently do not reflect the pathogen's evolutionary history and, hence, provide potentially misleading information about spread. More recent work has demonstrated that staphylococcal evolution proceeds sufficiently fast that the dynamics of S. aureus spatial spread can be elucidated at great detail on the basis of genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphisms.
追踪病原体的空间传播是分子传染病流行病学的主要目标。因此，已经使用了广泛的基因分型方法来监测金黄色葡萄球菌菌株的传播，从局部暴发到全球传播。我们对现有的方法进行了批判性的回顾，结果表明，目前用于金黄色葡萄球菌分型的分子标记物的变化非常缓慢，以至于它们在与流行病学基本不相关的时间尺度上监测进化变化。此外，更多变的标记物通常不能反映病原体的进化历史，因此，关于传播提供了潜在的误导信息。最近的研究表明，葡萄球菌的进化速度足够快，以至于可以根据全基因组单核苷酸多态性来详细阐明金黄色葡萄球菌空间传播的动态。
