Antibiotic resistant typhoid common in developing countries: study

Antibiotic resistant typhoid is spreading across many developing countries, which may cause serious and untreatable infections in humans, according to a landmark genomic study recently released by Britain's Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.

The institute said that the data used in the study was produced by a consortium of 74 collaborators from leading laboratories around the world working on typhoid, and describes one of the most comprehensive sets of genome data on a single human infectious agent.

The study shows that the current problem of antibiotic resistant typhoid is driven by a single clade, family of bacteria, called H58 that has now spread globally.

The H58 clade of Typhi is displacing other typhoid fever strains that have been established over decades and centuries throughout the typhoid endemic world, completely transforming the genetic architecture of the disease, researchers said.

"Typhoid affects around 30 million people each year and global surveillance at this scale is critical to address the ever-increasing public health threat caused by multi-drug resistant typhoid in many developing countries around the world," said Dr. Vanessa Wong from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, who is the lead author of the research paper.

Multi-drug resistant H58 has spread across Asia and Africa over the last 30 years, and created a previously underappreciated and ongoing epidemic through countries in eastern and southern Africa with important public health consequences, according to the study.

"In this study we have been able to provide a framework for future surveillance of this bacterium, which will enable us to understand how antimicrobial resistance emerges and spreads inter-continentally, with the aim to facilitate prevention and control of typhoid through the use of effective antimicrobials, introduction of vaccines, and water and sanitation programs," said Prof. Gordon Dougan from the Sanger Institute, who participated in the study.

The study has been published in the journal Nature Genetics. Endit