Dataset Information

Phages in Therapy and Prophylaxis of American Foulbrood - Recent Implications From Practical Applications.

ABSTRACT: American foulbrood is one of the most serious and yet unsolved problems of beekeeping around the world, because it causes a disease leading to the weakening of the vitality of honey bee populations and huge economic losses both in agriculture and horticulture. The etiological agent of this dangerous disease is an extremely pathogenic spore-forming bacterium, Paenibacillus larvae, which makes treatment very difficult. What is more, the use of antibiotics in the European Union is forbidden due to restrictions related to the prevention of the presence of antibiotic residues in honey, as well as the global problem of spreading antibiotic resistance in case of bacterial strains. The only available solution is burning of entire bee colonies, which results in large economic losses. Therefore, bacteriophages and their lytic enzymes can be a real effective alternative in the treatment and prevention of this Apis mellifera disease. In this review, we summarize phage characteristics that make them a potentially useful tool in the fight against American foulbrood. In addition, we gathered data regarding phage application that have been described so far, and attempted to show practical implications and possible limitations of their usage.

SUBMITTER: Jonczyk-Matysiak E

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7432437 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Phages in Therapy and Prophylaxis of American Foulbrood - Recent Implications From Practical Applications.

Jończyk-Matysiak Ewa E Popiela Ewa E Owczarek Barbara B Hodyra-Stefaniak Katarzyna K Świtała-Jeleń Kinga K Łodej Norbert N Kula Dominika D Neuberg Joanna J Migdał Paweł P Bagińska Natalia N Orwat Filip F Weber-Dąbrowska Beata B Roman Adam A Górski Andrzej A

Frontiers in microbiology 20200811

American foulbrood is one of the most serious and yet unsolved problems of beekeeping around the world, because it causes a disease leading to the weakening of the vitality of honey bee populations and huge economic losses both in agriculture and horticulture. The etiological agent of this dangerous disease is an extremely pathogenic spore-forming bacterium, <i>Paenibacillus larvae</i>, which makes treatment very difficult. What is more, the use of antibiotics in the European Union is forbidden ...[more]

PMID: 32849478

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Project description:BackgroundThe most severe bacterial disease of honeybees is American foulbrood (AFB). The epidemiology of AFB is driven by the extreme spore resilience, the difficulty of bees to remove these spores, and the considerable incidence of undetected spore-producing colonies. The honeybee collective defence mechanisms and their feedback on colony development, which involves a division of labour at multiple levels of colony organization, are difficult to model. To better predict disease outbreaks we need to understand the feedback between colony development and disease progression within the colony. We therefore developed Bayesian models with data from forty AFB-diseased colonies monitored over an entire foraging season to (i) investigate the relationship between spore production and symptoms, (ii) disentangle the feedback loops between AFB epidemiology and natural colony development, and (iii) discuss whether larger insect societies promote or limit within-colony disease transmission.ResultsRather than identifying a fixed spore count threshold for clinical symptoms, we estimated the probabilities around the relationship between spore counts and symptoms, taking into account modulators such as brood amount/number of bees and time post infection. We identified a decrease over time in the bees-to-brood ratio related to disease development, which should ultimately induce colony collapse. Lastly, two contrasting theories predict that larger colonies could promote either higher (classical epidemiological SIR-model) or lower (increasing spatial nest segregation and more effective pathogen removal) disease prevalence.ConclusionsAFB followed the predictions of the SIR-model, partly because disease prevalence and brood removal are decoupled, with worker bees acting more as disease vectors, infecting new brood, than as agents of social immunity, by removing infected brood. We therefore established a direct link between disease prevalence and social group size for a eusocial insect. We furthermore provide a probabilistic description of the relationship between AFB spore counts and symptoms, and how disease development and colony strength over a season modulate this relationship. These results help to better understand disease development within honeybee colonies, provide important estimates for further epidemiological modelling, and gained important insights into the optimal sampling strategy for practical beekeeping and honeybee research.

Dataset Information

Phages in Therapy and Prophylaxis of American Foulbrood - Recent Implications From Practical Applications.

Publications

Phages in Therapy and Prophylaxis of American Foulbrood - Recent Implications From Practical Applications.

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