Journal Article > CommentaryAbstract
Nat Microbiol. 2019 March 29 (Issue 5)
De Clerck H, Nanclares C, Sprecher A, Van Herp M, Wolz A
Nat Microbiol. 2019 March 29 (Issue 5)
The recent large outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in Western Africa resulted in greatly increased accumulation of human genotypic, phenotypic and clinical data, and improved our understanding of the spectrum of clinical manifestations. As a result, the WHO disease classification of EVD underwent major revision.
Journal Article > CommentaryFull Text
Nat Microbiol. 2016 February 24; Volume 1 (Issue 3); 16007.; DOI:10.1038/nmicrobiol.2016.7
Sprecher A, Feldman H, Hensley L, Kobinger GP, Nichol ST, et al.
Nat Microbiol. 2016 February 24; Volume 1 (Issue 3); 16007.; DOI:10.1038/nmicrobiol.2016.7
Concern over Ebola becoming endemic in West Africa has appeared in the medical and lay media. Routes of transmission, rates of viral evolution, suitability of humans as hosts and rarity of spillover events make this very unlikely. Without evidence that endemic Ebola is likely, ending epidemics should remain the focus.
Journal Article > ResearchFull Text
Nat Microbiol. 2016 March 21; Volume 1 (Issue 4); DOI:10.1038/nmicrobiol.2016.27
Njamkepo E, Fawal N, Tran-Dien A, Hawkey J, Strockbine N, et al.
Nat Microbiol. 2016 March 21; Volume 1 (Issue 4); DOI:10.1038/nmicrobiol.2016.27
Together with plague, smallpox and typhus, epidemics of dysentery have been a major scourge of human populations for centuries(1). A previous genomic study concluded that Shigella dysenteriae type 1 (Sd1), the epidemic dysentery bacillus, emerged and spread worldwide after the First World War, with no clear pattern of transmission(2). This is not consistent with the massive cyclic dysentery epidemics reported in Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries(1,3,4) and the first isolation of Sd1 in Japan in 1897(5). Here, we report a whole-genome analysis of 331 Sd1 isolates from around the world, collected between 1915 and 2011, providing us with unprecedented insight into the historical spread of this pathogen. We show here that Sd1 has existed since at least the eighteenth century and that it swept the globe at the end of the nineteenth century, diversifying into distinct lineages associated with the First World War, Second World War and various conflicts or natural disasters across Africa, Asia and Central America. We also provide a unique historical perspective on the evolution of antibiotic resistance over a 100-year period, beginning decades before the antibiotic era, and identify a prevalent multiple antibiotic-resistant lineage in South Asia that was transmitted in several waves to Africa, where it caused severe outbreaks of disease.