A stool sample from a patient infected with Shigella dysenteriaeWIKIMEDIA, CDCShigella dysenteriae, the bacterium that causes dysentery, originated in Europe and was spread to the rest of the world decades ago by emigrants and colonizers, according to a new genomic analysis of hundreds of strains of the pathogen. Researchers and historians previously suspected that European travelers had brought the deadly disease back with them from South America, Asia, or Africa. But the new findings, published in Nature Microbiology this week (March 21), tell a different tale.
An international team used high-throughput technology to sequence more than 300 strains of type 1 S. dysenteriae in samples collected from the early 20th century until 2011 at sites around the globe. The researchers detailed differences in the strains that caused various outbreaks throughout history, and surmised that type 1 S. dysenteriae dates to at least the 18th century.
“Analyzing the full genomes of all these Shigella dysenteriae strains collected over a huge timeframe and from such an array of different countries provided us with an unprecedented insight into the historical spread of this pathogen,” study coauthor Nicholas Thomson, leader of the Bacterial Genomics and Evolution group at the Sanger Institute in the U.K., said in a statement. “This was needed because there are still ...
