The variability and seasonality of the environmental reservoir of Mycobacterium bovis shed by wild European badgers

The incidence of Mycobacterium bovis, the causative agent of bovine tuberculosis, has been increasing in UK cattle herds resulting in substantial economic losses. The European badger (Meles meles) is implicated as a wildlife reservoir of infection. One likely route of transmission to cattle is throu...

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Main Authors:	King, Hayley C., Murphy, Andrew, James, Phillip, Travis, Emma, Porter, David, Hung, Yu-Jiun, Sawyer, Jason, Cork, Jennifer, Delahay, Richard J., Gaze, William, Courtenay, Orin, Wellington, Elizabeth M.
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Nature Publishing Group 2015
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4527091/

id	pubmed-4527091
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-45270912015-08-07 The variability and seasonality of the environmental reservoir of Mycobacterium bovis shed by wild European badgers King, Hayley C. Murphy, Andrew James, Phillip Travis, Emma Porter, David Hung, Yu-Jiun Sawyer, Jason Cork, Jennifer Delahay, Richard J. Gaze, William Courtenay, Orin Wellington, Elizabeth M. Article The incidence of Mycobacterium bovis, the causative agent of bovine tuberculosis, has been increasing in UK cattle herds resulting in substantial economic losses. The European badger (Meles meles) is implicated as a wildlife reservoir of infection. One likely route of transmission to cattle is through exposure to infected badger urine and faeces. The relative importance of the environment in transmission remains unknown, in part due to the lack of information on the distribution and magnitude of environmental reservoirs. Here we identify potential infection hotspots in the badger population and quantify the heterogeneity in bacterial load; with infected badgers shedding between 1 × 103 − 4 × 105 M. bovis cells g−1 of faeces, creating a substantial and seasonally variable environmental reservoir. Our findings highlight the potential importance of monitoring environmental reservoirs of M. bovis which may constitute a component of disease spread that is currently overlooked and yet may be responsible for a proportion of transmission amongst badgers and onwards to cattle. Nature Publishing Group 2015-08-06 /pmc/articles/PMC4527091/ /pubmed/26247348 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep12318 Text en Copyright © 2015, Macmillan Publishers Limited http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	King, Hayley C. Murphy, Andrew James, Phillip Travis, Emma Porter, David Hung, Yu-Jiun Sawyer, Jason Cork, Jennifer Delahay, Richard J. Gaze, William Courtenay, Orin Wellington, Elizabeth M.
spellingShingle	King, Hayley C. Murphy, Andrew James, Phillip Travis, Emma Porter, David Hung, Yu-Jiun Sawyer, Jason Cork, Jennifer Delahay, Richard J. Gaze, William Courtenay, Orin Wellington, Elizabeth M. The variability and seasonality of the environmental reservoir of Mycobacterium bovis shed by wild European badgers
author_facet	King, Hayley C. Murphy, Andrew James, Phillip Travis, Emma Porter, David Hung, Yu-Jiun Sawyer, Jason Cork, Jennifer Delahay, Richard J. Gaze, William Courtenay, Orin Wellington, Elizabeth M.
author_sort	King, Hayley C.
title	The variability and seasonality of the environmental reservoir of Mycobacterium bovis shed by wild European badgers
title_short	The variability and seasonality of the environmental reservoir of Mycobacterium bovis shed by wild European badgers
title_full	The variability and seasonality of the environmental reservoir of Mycobacterium bovis shed by wild European badgers
title_fullStr	The variability and seasonality of the environmental reservoir of Mycobacterium bovis shed by wild European badgers
title_full_unstemmed	The variability and seasonality of the environmental reservoir of Mycobacterium bovis shed by wild European badgers
title_sort	variability and seasonality of the environmental reservoir of mycobacterium bovis shed by wild european badgers
description	The incidence of Mycobacterium bovis, the causative agent of bovine tuberculosis, has been increasing in UK cattle herds resulting in substantial economic losses. The European badger (Meles meles) is implicated as a wildlife reservoir of infection. One likely route of transmission to cattle is through exposure to infected badger urine and faeces. The relative importance of the environment in transmission remains unknown, in part due to the lack of information on the distribution and magnitude of environmental reservoirs. Here we identify potential infection hotspots in the badger population and quantify the heterogeneity in bacterial load; with infected badgers shedding between 1 × 103 − 4 × 105 M. bovis cells g−1 of faeces, creating a substantial and seasonally variable environmental reservoir. Our findings highlight the potential importance of monitoring environmental reservoirs of M. bovis which may constitute a component of disease spread that is currently overlooked and yet may be responsible for a proportion of transmission amongst badgers and onwards to cattle.
publisher	Nature Publishing Group
publishDate	2015
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4527091/
_version_	1613256477961617408

The variability and seasonality of the environmental reservoir of Mycobacterium bovis shed by wild European badgers

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