RT Journal Article
T1 Tuberculosis epidemiology in islands: insularity, hosts and trade
A1 Acevedo, Pelayo
A1 Romero Martínez, Beatriz
A1 Vicente, Joaquin
A1 Caracappa, Santo
A1 Galluzzo, Paola
A1 Marineo, Sandra
A1 Vicari, Domenico
A1 Torina, Alessandra
A1 Casal, Carmen
A1 de la Fuente, Jose
A1 Gortazar, Christian
AB Because of their relative simplicity and the barriers to gene flow, islands are ideal systems to study the distribution of biodiversity. However, the knowledge that can be extracted from this peculiar ecosystem regarding epidemiology of economically relevant diseases has not been widely addressed. We used information available in the scientific literature for 10 old world islands or archipelagos and original data on Sicily to gain new insights into the epidemiology of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTC). We explored three nonexclusive working hypotheses on the processes modulating bovine tuberculosis (bTB) herd prevalence in cattle and MTC strain diversity: insularity, hosts and trade. Results suggest that bTB herd prevalence was positively correlated with island size, the presence of wild hosts, and the number of imported cattle, but neither with isolation nor with cattle density. MTC strain diversity was positively related with cattle bTB prevalence, presence of wild hosts and the number of imported cattle, but not with island size, isolation, and cattle density. The three most common spoligotype patterns coincided between Sicily and mainland Italy. However in Sicily, these common patterns showed a clearer dominance than on the Italian mainland, and seven of 19 patterns (37%) found in Sicily had not been reported from continental Italy. Strain patterns were not spatially clustered in Sicily. We were able to infer several aspects of MTC epidemiology and control in islands and thus in fragmented host and pathogen populations. Our results point out the relevance of the intensity of the cattle commercial networks in the epidemiology of MTC, and suggest that eradication will prove more difficult with increasing size of the island and its environmental complexity, mainly in terms of the diversity of suitable domestic and wild MTC hosts.
PB Public Library Science
SN 1932-6203
YR 2013
FD 2013
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/35288
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/35288
LA eng
NO Unión Europea. FP7
DS Docta Complutense
RD 6 abr 2025