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Genomic Analysis and Comparison of Two Gonorrhea Outbreaks
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Genomic Analysis and Comparison of Two Gonorrhea Outbreaks

Xavier Didelot, Janina Dordel, Lilith K. Whittles, Caitlin Collins, Nicole Bilek, Cynthia J. Bishop, Peter J. White, David M. Aanensen, Julian Parkhill, Stephen D. Bentley, …
mBio, v 7(3)
01 May 2016
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1128/mBio.00525-16
PMID: 27353752
Featured in Collection :   UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
url
https://doi.org/10.1128/mbio.00525-16View
Published, Version of Record (VoR)CC BY V4.0,  Open
url
https://doi.org/10.1128/mBio.00525-16View
Published, Version of Record (VoR) Open

Abstract

Life Sciences & Biomedicine Microbiology Science & Technology
Gonorrhea is a sexually transmitted disease causing growing concern, with a substantial increase in reported incidence over the past few years in the United Kingdom and rising levels of resistance to a wide range of antibiotics. Understanding its epidemiology is therefore of major biomedical importance, not only on a population scale but also at the level of direct transmission. However, the molecular typing techniques traditionally used for gonorrhea infections do not provide sufficient resolution to investigate such fine-scale patterns. Here we sequenced the genomes of 237 isolates from two local collections of isolates from Sheffield and London, each of which was resolved into a single type using traditional methods. The two data sets were selected to have different epidemiological properties: the Sheffield data were collected over 6 years from a predominantly heterosexual population, whereas the London data were gathered within half a year and strongly associated with men who have sex with men. Based on contact tracing information between individuals in Sheffield, we found that transmission is associated with a median time to most recent common ancestor of 3.4 months, with an upper bound of 8 months, which we used as a criterion to identify likely transmission links in both data sets. In London, we found that transmission happened predominantly between individuals of similar age, sexual orientation, and location and also with the same HIV serostatus, which may reflect serosorting and associated risk behaviors. Comparison of the two data sets suggests that the London epidemic involved about ten times more cases than the Sheffield outbreak. IMPORTANCE The recent increases in gonorrhea incidence and antibiotic resistance are cause for public health concern. Successful intervention requires a better understanding of transmission patterns, which is not uncovered by traditional molecular epidemiology techniques. Here we studied two outbreaks that took place in Sheffield and London, United Kingdom. We show that whole-genome sequencing provides the resolution to investigate direct gonorrhea transmission between infected individuals. Combining genome sequencing with rich epidemiological information about infected individuals reveals the importance of several transmission routes and risk factors, which can be used to design better control measures.

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50 citations in Web of Science
49 citations in Scopus

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UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

This publication has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:

#3 Good Health and Well-Being

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Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
International collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Microbiology
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