Environmental sampling of Leptospira species to link to human leptospirosis cases

描述（由申请人提供）：钩端螺旋体病是一种常见的人畜共患疾病，最流行于热带和发展中国家。在全球每年报告的约35万例病例中，死亡病例超过10%。尽管这种疾病无处不在，发病率高，但关于环境循环和传播给人类的情况仍有很多未知之处。致病性钩端螺旋体细菌通过哺乳动物宿主的尿液进入环境时污染环境。人类经常因受污染的水或直接接触受感染的尿液而感染钩端螺旋体病。然而，有记录的钩端螺旋体病病例是由于接触了几乎没有怀疑钩端螺旋体污染的水，这表明需要确定影响钩端螺旋体持续存在和传播的其他潜在重要因素。牲畜、宠物和家鼠以及天气模式被认为在环境循环中发挥着重要作用，并与人类钩端螺旋体病有关，但缺乏直接的流行病学联系。这项工作的长期目标是减少

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Leptospirosis is a common zoonotic disease most prevalent in the tropics and developing world. Death occurs in over 10% of the ~350,000 cases reported worldwide annually. Despite this ubiquity and incidence of disease, much remains unknown about environmental cycling and transmission to humans. Pathogenic Leptospira bacteria contaminate the environment when shed by urine from mammalian hosts into the environment. Humans often contract leptospirosis from contaminated water or from direct exposure to infected urine. However, cases of leptospirosis have been documented from contact with water with little suspected leptospire contamination, suggesting that other potentially important factors affecting Leptospira persistence and transmission need to be identified. Livestock, pets and peridomestic rats as well as weather patterns are thought to play significant roles in environmental cycling and have been correlated to leptospirosis in humans, but direct epidemiological links are missing. The long-term objective of this work is to reduce the number of leptospirosis cases by better understanding links between Leptospira in the environment and leptospirosis in humans. This study will be conducted around Portoviejo City, Ecuador, where leptospirosis cases are common and will involve collection and analyses of environmental, animal and clinical samples. The central hypothesis of this proposal is that specific sources are more important than others for human transmission. Testing this hypothesis will involve addressing two specific aims. The first is to track environmental loads of pathogenic Leptospira over time and search for biotic and abiotic correlates. As leptospirosis is water borne, samples will be collected from the two large rivers near Portoviejo. Physical properties of sampling sites and samples will be obtained and the load of pathogenic Leptospira will be quantified through real- time PCR analysis. Microbial communities in each sample will be characterized by 16S rRNA gene surveys using high-throughput next-generation sequencing technology. The second specific aim will be to link environmental genotypes to clinical genotypes. Clinical samples will be collected, genotyped and compared to genotypes from samples collected from livestock, rats and river samples. These sample sources represent the most significant known sources of leptospirosis infections and thus provide a unique opportunity to link environmental and animal genotypes to human disease.