RT Journal Article
T1 Attributable sources of the five most prevalent non-typhoidal Salmonella serovars across ten European countries
A1 Teunis, Gijs
A1 Dallman, Timothy J.
A1 Zając, Magdalena
A1 Skarżyńska, Magdalena
A1 Petrovska, Liljana
A1 Pista, Angela
A1 Silveira, Leonor
A1 Clemente, Lurdes
A1 Thépault, Amandine
A1 Bonifait, Laetitia
A1 Kerouanton, Annaëlle
A1 Chemaly, Marianne
A1 Álvarez Sánchez, Julio
A1 Söderlund, Robert
A1 Nielsen, Eva Møller
A1 Chattaway, Marie
A1 Burgess, Kaye
A1 Byrne, William
A1 Zomer, Aldert L.
A1 van den Beld, Maaike
A1 Hendrickx, Antoni P.A.
A1 Franz, Eelco
A1 Pires, Sara
A1 Hald, Tine
A1 Mughini-Gras, Lapo
AB Non-typhoidal Salmonella is the second most frequently reported zoonotic pathogen in the European Union and European Economic Area. Most human infections are caused by serovars Enteritidis and Typhimurium. Genomic characterisation of Salmonella isolates from humans and animals has become a routine public health surveillance tool in many countries. In this study, the relative contributions of several potential sources of human infection of the five frequently reported Salmonella serovars were estimated using machine-learning methods based on a large, cross-sectional collection of genomes from human cases, and animal and environmental sources, across ten European countries. To define the population structure, core-genome Multilocus Sequence Typing was performed. A supervised machine-learning approach was applied for source attribution in the form of a Random Forest classifier. The source and country attribution models achieved moderate accuracy (F1=0.6-0.9), which is lower than in previous studies using machine-learning on Whole Genome Sequencing data. However, attributions of human clinical isolates to different sources were generally in line with previous findings for these five serovars. While the lack of clonality in some sources hindered their prediction, it is also likely that certain sources (e.g., pets) do not serve as major contributors to human infection. Therefore, in most cases attributing these sources to the livestock species they are typically associated with, is likely appropriate. Country attributions showed that substantial human cases are attributable to countries other than their own, indicating geographical interrelatedness of sources. This highlights the value of internationally harmonised Salmonella-control policies in the food production chain.
SN 0163-4453
YR 2025
FD 2025-11
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/126406
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/126406
LA eng
NO European Commission
NO Ministry of Education and Science (Polonia)
DS Docta Complutense
RD 21 ene 2026