Yes / Background.
Increased availability of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) techniques allows, for the first time,
to distinguish relapses from reinfections in patients with multiple Buruli ulcer (BU) episodes.
Methodology.
We compared the number and location of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) identified by genomic screening between four pairs of Mycobacterium ulcerans isolates collected
at the time of first diagnosis and at recurrence, derived from a collection of almost 5000 well
characterized clinical samples from one BU treatment center in Benin.
Principal Findings.
The findings suggest that after surgical treatment—without antibiotics—the second episodes were due to relapse rather than reinfection. Since specific antibiotics were introduced
for the treatment of BU, the one patient with a culture available from both disease episodes
had M. ulcerans isolates with a genomic distance of 20 SNPs, suggesting the patient was
most likely reinfected rather than having a relapse.
Conclusions.
To our knowledge, this study is the first to study recurrences in M. ulcerans using NGS, and
to identify exogenous reinfection as causing a recurrence of BU. The occurrence of reinfection highlights the contribution of ongoing exposure to M. ulcerans to disease recurrence,
and has implications for vaccine development. / This work was supported by the UBS Optimus Foundation (Zurich, Switzerland) and the Department of Economy, Science and Innovation of the Flemish Government (Belgium). KV was supported by a VLADOC PhD scholarship of VLIRUOS (Belgium).
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BRADFORD/oai:bradscholars.brad.ac.uk:10454/17297 |
| Date | 24 September 2019 |
| Creators | Eddyani, M., Vandelannoote, K., Meehan, Conor J., Bhuju, S., Porter, J.L., Aguiar, J., Seemann, T., Jarek, M., Singh, M., Portaels, F., Stinear, T.P., de Jong, B.C. |
| Source Sets | Bradford Scholars |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Article, Published version |
| Rights | © 2015 Eddyani et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
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