Widespread sharing of pneumococcal strains in a rural African setting: proximate villages are more likely to share similar strains that are carried at multiple timepoints.

ABSTRACT: The transmission dynamics of Streptococcus pneumoniae in sub-Saharan Africa are poorly understood due to a lack of adequate epidemiological and genomic data. Here we leverage a longitudinal cohort from 21 neighbouring villages in rural Africa to study how closely related strains of S. pneumoniae are shared among infants. We analysed 1074 pneumococcal genomes isolated from 102 infants from 21 villages. Strains were designated for unique serotype and sequence-type combinations, and we arbitrarily defined strain sharing where the pairwise genetic distance between strains could be accounted for by the mean within host intra-strain diversity. We used non-parametric statistical tests to assess the role of spatial distance and prolonged carriage on strain sharing using a logistic re

SUBMITTER: Senghore M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8942022 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature