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Public health and ecological significance of rodents in Cryptosporidium infections.

ABSTRACT: Cryptosporidium is one of the most important genera of intestinal zoonotic pathogens that cause diarrhea in both humans and animals. Rodents are common and important hosts or carriers of pathogens with public health importance, and rodents play an important role in the ecology of zoonotic transmission. The overall worldwide prevalence of Cryptosporidium spp. in rodents is 19.8% (4589/23142). Twenty-five known Cryptosporidium species and 43 genotypes have been identified, and C. parvum is the dominant species in rodents worldwide. Rodents transfer pathogens to humans by the direct route or by serving as intermediate hosts transmitting the pathogens to other animals. We review the epidemiology, diversity, and transmission routes of Cryptosporidium spp. in rodents. The main purpose of this review is to highlight Cryptosporidium infection in rodents and its transmission, associated risk factors, and prevention; in addition, we assess the public health and ecological significance of Cryptosporidium infections from the One Health perspective.

SUBMITTER: Zhang K

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8692995 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Public health and ecological significance of rodents in Cryptosporidium infections.

Zhang Kaihui K Fu Yin Y Li Junqiang J Zhang Longxian L

One health (Amsterdam, Netherlands) 20211216

Cryptosporidium is one of the most important genera of intestinal zoonotic pathogens that cause diarrhea in both humans and animals. Rodents are common and important hosts or carriers of pathogens with public health importance, and rodents play an important role in the ecology of zoonotic transmission. The overall worldwide prevalence of Cryptosporidium spp. in rodents is 19.8% (4589/23142). Twenty-five known Cryptosporidium species and 43 genotypes have been identified, and ...[more]

PMID: 34984218

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Project description:The protozoan parasite Cryptosporidium is an important cause of diarrheal disease (cryptosporidiosis) in humans and animals, with significant morbidity and mortality especially in severely immunocompromised people and in young children in low-resource settings. Due to the sexual life cycle of the parasite, transmission is complex. There are no restrictions on sexual recombination between sub-populations, meaning that large-scale genetic recombination may occur within a host, potentially confounding epidemiological analysis. To clarify the relationships between infections in different hosts, it is first necessary to correctly identify species and genotypes, but these differentiations are not made by standard diagnostic tests and more sophisticated molecular methods have been developed. For instance, multilocus genotyping has been utilized to differentiate isolates within the major human pathogens, Cryptosporidium parvum and Cryptosporidium hominis. This has allowed mixed populations with multiple alleles to be identified: recombination events are considered to be the driving force of increased variation and the emergence of new subtypes. As yet, whole genome sequencing (WGS) is having limited impact on public health investigations, due in part to insufficient numbers of oocysts and purity of DNA derived from clinical samples. Moreover, because public health agencies have not prioritized parasites, validation has not been performed on user-friendly data analysis pipelines suitable for public health practitioners. Nonetheless, since the first whole genome assembly in 2004 there are now numerous genomes of human and animal-derived cryptosporidia publically available, spanning nine species. It has also been demonstrated that WGS from very low numbers of oocysts is possible, through the use of amplification procedures. These data and approaches are providing new insights into host-adapted infectivity, the presence and frequency of multiple sub-populations of Cryptosporidium spp. within single clinical samples, and transmission of infection. Analyses show that although whole genome sequences do indeed contain many alleles, they are invariably dominated by a single highly abundant allele. These insights are helping to better understand population structures within hosts, which will be important to develop novel prevention strategies in the fight against cryptosporidiosis.

Dataset Information

Public health and ecological significance of rodents in Cryptosporidium infections.

Publications

Public health and ecological significance of rodents in <i>Cryptosporidium</i> infections.

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