Researchers at Harvard Medical School and Children's Hospital Boston have retraced the evolution of an unusual bacterial infection as it spread among cystic fibrosis patients by sequencing scores of samples collected during the outbreak, since contained. A significant achievement in genetic pathology, the work also suggests a new way to recognize adaptive mutationsto see evolution as it happensand sheds new light on how our bodies resist infection.
The results are to be published online November 13 in Nature Genetics.
Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a hereditary disease that renders the lungs susceptible to bacterial infection. Though there is no cure for CF, it is managed with antibiotics and therapies that remove mucous from the lungs. An infection that resists antibiotics can overwhelm the body's defenses and lead eventually to respiratory failure and death, but advances in care have increased the median life expectancy for Americans born with CF from six months in 1959 to nearly 40 years today.
Despite constant vigilance, outbreaks pose a particular risk at CF treatment centers, where otherwise rare strains of bacteria can spread between patients. In the 1990's, one such outbreak spread among CF patients followed at a single CF center in Boston. Thirty-nine people were infected with the strain, later identified as a new species of bacteria, Burkholderia dolosa.
The hospital implemented new infection control measures and has not seen a new case in more than six years. But the outbreak presented researchers with a rare opportunity: A new pathogen with a closed circle of infection and abundant samples collected over the span of a decade.
Roy Kishony was looking for just such a bug. The HMS professor of systems biology studies bacterial evolution, exploring such questions as how antibiotic resistance arises. Many of his experiments are conducted in the lab: Grow bacteria in a test tube, add just enough antibiotic to
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| Contact: David Cameron david_cameron@hms.harvard.edu 617-432-0441 Harvard Medical School Source:Eurekalert |
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