Contact Details

Eric Fèvre (eric.fevre@liverpool.ac.uk). Institute of Infection and Global Health (IGH), University of Liverpool and jointly appointed at the International Livestock Research Institute, Nairobi, Kenya.

Background

How do zoonotic diseases spillover into humans? If we are able to understand the influence of environmental changes on the diversity and distribution of microbial communities in wildlife we may be able to make some progress in improving our understanding.

Project Overview

Wild birds were sampled across 99 wildlife-livestock-human interfaces across Nairobi, Kenya and whole genome sequencing (WGS) was used to generate data that allowed characterization of bacterial genes known to be carried on mobile genetic elements with avian-borne E. coli.

Research Impact

The results of this study show that there are differences in the response to wildlife species to changes in urban land use which could play a part in determining how microbial genetic diversity is related to host community diversity. Evidence suggests that households may act as an interface for the exchange of genes encoding AMR between livestock and wild birds.

Researchers

James Hassel^1,2, Melissa Ward^3,4, Dishon Mulio^2,3,5, Judy Bettridge^1,2, H. Phan^4,6, Timothy Robinson⁷, Allan Ogendo², T. Imboma⁸, John Kiiru⁹, Sam Kariuki⁹, Michael Begon¹⁰, Erastus Kang’ethe¹¹, Mark Woolhouse^3,5, Eric Fèvre^1,2.

Institutions Involved

1. Institute of Infection and Global Health, University of Liverpool, UK
2. International Livestock Research Institute, Nairobi, Kenya
3. Centre for Immunity, Infection and Evolution, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
4. Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine, University of Oxford, John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, UK
5. Usher Institute of Population Health Sciences and Informatics, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
6. Faculty of Medicine, NIHR BRC Southampton, University of Southampton, UK
7. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, Italy
8. National Museums of Kenya, Nairobi, Kenya
9. Kenya Medical Research Institute, Nairobi, Kenya
10. Institute of Integrative Biology, University of Liverpool, UK
11. University of Nairobi, Kenya.

Funding

Funding was provided by:

• UK Medical Research Council, through the Environmental and Social Ecology of Human Infectious Diseases Initiative (ESEI)
•  A cross-research council initiative supported by the Medical Research Council, Biotechnology and Biological Science Research Council, the Economic and Social Research Council and the Natural
• Environment Research Council and in part, by the CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH), led by the International Food Policy Research Institute

More information

1. Full publication available here: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-10595-1
2. Zoonoses in Livestock in Kenya (ZooLinK). http://www.zoonotic-diseases.org/project/zoolink-project/