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Microbial Genomics of Sexually Transmitted Infections

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Microbial Genomics of Sexually Transmitted Infections
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Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) remain a major global public health threat. Often disproportionately impacting specific groups of people, significant morbidity and mortality is caused by common diseases including gonorrhoea, chlamydia, syphilis, HIV infection, Hepatitis B, and disease linked to Human Papilloma Virus.  STI Control can be difficult and challenges range from practical obstacles around the distribution of effective antivirals and vaccines to the emergence of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) among bacterial pathogens. Undoubtedly, effective interventions depend upon detailed understanding of the pathogens and whole genome sequencing (WGS) provides a solution to this. With improved access to resources and decreasing sequencing costs, WGS has dramatically changed the research landscape revealing the genetic basis of important phenotypes such as virulence and AMR, underpinning local and national surveillance programs to understand disease epidemiology, emergence and spread, and accelerating vaccine development.

Guest-edited by Dr Odile Harrison and Dr Janet Wilson (President of IUSTI) this collection gathers original research articles, reviews and methods that use WGS approaches for the analysis of sexually transmitted pathogens. The goal of this collection is to provide to the community a comprehensive suite of articles that consolidate recent advances made in the field and provide tools for the community for further research.

This collection is now open for submissions in Microbial Genomics. If you’d be interested in being included in the collection, please submit to our peer review system and state that your submission is intended for the ‘Microbial Genomics of Sexually Transmitted Infections’ collection.

Image credit: Odile Harrison

Collection Contents

1 result

    • Increased clonality among isolates during the COVID-19 pandemic in Amsterdam, the Netherlands

      Distancing measures during the COVID-19 lockdown led to a temporary decrease of casual sex partners among clients of the Centre for Sexual Health (CSH) in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. We investigated the effect of this change on the genotypic and phenotypic distribution of () isolates from CSH patients. From each positive patient we sequenced one isolate, resulting in 322 isolates which constituted two groups: 181 isolates cultured from 15 January to 29 February 2020 (before the first lockdown) and 141 cultured from 15 May to 30 June 2020 (during the first lockdown). Patient characteristics showed significantly more symptomatic patients and significantly fewer reported sex partners during the lockdown. Phenotypic data showed an increase in low-level azithromycin resistance and ceftriaxone susceptibility during the lockdown, and this remained after the study period. The diversity in sequence types (STs) decreased slightly during the lockdown. A shift occurred from ST 8156 being predominant before lockdown to ST 9362 during lockdown and a remarkably low median SNP distance of 17 SNPs was found between ST 9362 isolates obtained during lockdown. These findings reflect restricted travel and the change in sexual behaviour of CSH clients during the lockdown, with a potentially increased local transmission of the ST 9362 strain during this period, which led to genotypic and phenotypic changes in the population. This shows that public health measures have far-reaching consequences and should be considered in the surveillance of other infectious diseases.

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