No / Since 2000, cases of the neglected tropical disease Buruli ulcer, caused by infection with Mycobacterium ulcerans, have increased 100-fold around Melbourne (population 4.4 million), the capital of Victoria, in temperate southeastern Australia. The reasons for this increase are unclear. Here, we used whole-genome sequence comparisons of 178 M. ulcerans isolates obtained primarily from human clinical specimens, spanning 70 years, to model the population dynamics of this pathogen from this region. Using phylogeographic and advanced Bayesian phylogenetic approaches, we found that there has been a migration of the pathogen from the east end of the state, beginning in the 1980s, 300 km west to the major human population center around Melbourne. This move was then followed by a significant increase in M. ulcerans population size. These analyses inform our thinking around Buruli ulcer transmission and control, indicating that M. ulcerans is introduced to a new environment and then expands, rather than it being from the awakening of a quiescent pathogen reservoir. / National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia (NHMRC), an NHMRC Senior Research Fellowship to T.P.S. (grant GNT1105525); and an NHMRC Practitioner Fellowship to B.P.H. (GNT1105905). A.H.B. was supported by an Australian Postgraduate Award Ph.D. scholarship.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BRADFORD/oai:bradscholars.brad.ac.uk:10454/17261 |
| Date | 10 September 2019 |
| Source Sets | Bradford Scholars |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Article, No full-text in the repository |
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