RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 African nonhuman primates are infected with the yaws bacterium Treponema pallidum subsp. pertenue
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 135491
DO 10.1101/135491
A1 Sascha Knauf
A1 Jan F. Gogarten
A1 Verena J. Schuenemann
A1 Hélène M. De Nys
A1 Ariane Düx
A1 Michal Strouhal
A1 Lenka Mikalová
A1 Kirsten I. Bos
A1 Roy Armstrong
A1 Emmanuel K. Batamuzi
A1 Idrissa S. Chuma
A1 Bernard Davoust
A1 Georges Diatta
A1 Robert D. Fyumagwa
A1 Reuben R. Kazwala
A1 Julius D. Keyyu
A1 Inyasi A. V. Lejora
A1 Anthony Levasseur
A1 Hsi Liu
A1 Michael A. Mayhew
A1 Oleg Mediannikov
A1 Didier Raoult
A1 Roman M. Wittig
A1 Christian Roos
A1 Fabian H. Leendertz
A1 David Šmajs
A1 Kay Nieselt
A1 Johannes Krause
A1 Sébastien Calvignac-Spencer
YR 2017
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/05/10/135491.abstract
AB Treponema pallidum subsp. pertenue (TPE) is the causative agent of yaws. The disease was subject to global eradication efforts in the mid 20th century but reemerged in West Africa, Southern Asia, and the Pacific region. Despite its importance for eradication, detailed data on possible nonhuman disease reservoirs are missing. A number of African nonhuman primates (NHPs) have been reported to show skin ulcerations suggestive of treponemal infection in humans. Furthermore antibodies against Treponema pallidum (TP) have been repeatedly detected in wild NHP populations. While genetic studies confirmed that NHPs are infected with TP strains, subspecies identification was only possible once for a strain isolated in 1966, pinpointing the involvement of TPE. We therefore collected a number of recently isolated simian TP strains and determined eight whole genome sequences using hybridization capture or long-range PCR combined with next-generation sequencing. These new genomes were compared with those of known human TP isolates. Our results show that naturally occurring simian TP strains circulating in three African NHP species all cluster with human TPE strains and show the same genomic structure as human TPE strains. These data indicate that humans are not the exclusive host for the yaws bacterium and that a One Health approach is required to achieve sustainable eradication of human yaws.