Coipan Claudia E, Friesema Ingrid H M, van Hoek Angela H A M, van den Bosch Tijs, van den Beld Maaike, Kuiling Sjoerd, Gras Lapo Mughini, Bergval Indra, Bosch Thijs, Wullings Bart, van der Voort Menno, Franz Eelco
Centre for Infectious Disease Control, National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), Bilthoven, Netherlands.
Wageningen Food Safety Research (WFSR), Wageningen, Netherlands.
Front Microbiol. 2023 Apr 6;14:1147137. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2023.1147137. eCollection 2023.
Listeriosis, caused by infection with (), is a relatively rare but severe disease with one of the highest mortality rates among bacterial foodborne illnesses. A better understanding on the degree of clustering, the temporal distribution of the clusters, and their association with the various food sources is expected to lead to improved source tracing and risk-based sampling.
We investigated the genomic epidemiology of in the Netherlands between 2010 and 2020 by analyzing whole-genome-sequencing (WGS) data of isolates from listerioss patients and food sources from nationwide integrated surveillance and monitoring. WGS data of 756 patient and 770 food/environmental isolates was assessed using core-genome multi-locus sequence typing (cgMLST) with Hamming distance as measure for pairwise distances. Associations of genotype with the epidemiological variables such as patient's age and gender, and systematic use of specific drugs were tested by multinomial logistic regressions. Genetic differentiation of the within and between food categories was calculated based on allele frequencies at the 1701 cgMLST loci in each food category.
We confirmed previous results that some clonal complexes (CCs) are overrepresented among clinical isolates but could not identify any epidemiological risk factors. The main findings of this study include the observation of a very weak attribution of types to food categories and a much better attribution to the producer level. In addition, we identified a high degree of temporal persistence of food, patient and mixed clusters, with more than half of the clusters spanning over more than 1 year and up to 10 years.
Taken together this would indicate that identifying persistent contamination in food production settings, and producers that process a wide variety of raw food produce, could significantly contribute to lowering the disease burden.
由单核细胞增生李斯特菌（Listeria monocytogenes）感染引起的李斯特菌病是一种相对罕见但严重的疾病，在细菌性食源性疾病中死亡率极高。更好地了解聚集程度、聚集的时间分布及其与各种食物来源的关联，有望改进溯源和基于风险的采样。
我们通过分析2010年至2020年间荷兰全国综合监测和监测中李斯特菌病患者分离株及食物来源的全基因组测序（WGS）数据，研究了单核细胞增生李斯特菌的基因组流行病学。使用核心基因组多位点序列分型（cgMLST），以汉明距离作为成对距离的度量，评估了756例患者和770份食物/环境分离株的WGS数据。通过多项逻辑回归检验基因型与患者年龄和性别等流行病学变量以及特定药物的系统使用之间的关联。根据每个食物类别中1701个cgMLST位点的等位基因频率，计算食物类别内部和之间单核细胞增生李斯特菌的遗传分化。
我们证实了先前的结果，即一些克隆复合体（CCs）在临床分离株中占比过高，但未发现任何流行病学风险因素。本研究的主要发现包括观察到单核细胞增生李斯特菌类型与食物类别之间的归属关系非常弱，而与生产商层面的归属关系要好得多。此外，我们发现食物、患者和混合集群具有高度的时间持续性，超过一半的集群持续时间超过1年，最长可达10年。
综上所述，这表明识别食品生产环境中的持续污染以及加工多种生鲜食品的生产商，可能会显著有助于降低李斯特菌病的疾病负担。
