van Tonder, Andries J; McCullagh, Frances; McKeand, Hanan; Thaw, Sue; Bellis, Katie; Raisen, Claire; Lay, Liz; Aggarwal, Dinesh; Holmes, Mark; Parkhill, Julian; +3 more... Harrison, Ewan M; Kucharski, Adam; Conlan, Andrew; (2023) Colonization and transmission of Staphylococcus aureus in schools: a citizen science project. Microbial genomics, 9 (4). ISSN 2057-5858 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1099/mgen.0.000993
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Abstract
Aggregation of children in schools has been established to be a key driver of transmission of infectious diseases. Mathematical models of transmission used to predict the impact of control measures, such as vaccination and testing, commonly depend on self-reported contact data. However, the link between self-reported social contacts and pathogen transmission has not been well described. To address this, we used Staphylococcus aureus as a model organism to track transmission within two secondary schools in England and test for associations between self-reported social contacts, test positivity and the bacterial strain collected from the same students. Students filled out a social contact survey and their S. aureus colonization status was ascertained through self-administered swabs from which isolates were sequenced. Isolates from the local community were also sequenced to assess the representativeness of school isolates. A low frequency of genome-linked transmission precluded a formal analysis of links between genomic and social networks, suggesting that S. aureus transmission within schools is too rare to make it a viable tool for this purpose. Whilst we found no evidence that schools are an important route of transmission, increased colonization rates found within schools imply that school-age children may be an important source of community transmission.
Item Type | Article |
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Faculty and Department | Faculty of Epidemiology and Population Health > Dept of Infectious Disease Epidemiology & Dynamics (2023-) |
Research Centre | Centre for the Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases |
PubMed ID | 37074324 |
Elements ID | 201831 |
Official URL | http://dx.doi.org/10.1099/mgen.0.000993 |
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Filename: Tonder-etal-2023-Colonization-and-transmission-of-staphylococcus.pdf
Licence: Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0
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