Two decades of tuberculosis surveillance reveal disease spread, high levels of exposure and mortality and marked variation in disease progression in wild meerkats

dc.contributor.authorMueller-Klein, Nadine
dc.contributor.authorRisely, Alice
dc.contributor.authorSchmid, Dominik W.
dc.contributor.authorManser, Marta B.
dc.contributor.authorClutton-Brock, Tim H.
dc.contributor.authorSommer, Simone
dc.date.accessioned2022-12-07T04:42:24Z
dc.date.available2022-12-07T04:42:24Z
dc.date.issued2022-11
dc.descriptionDATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT: Data used for this publication is available at https://github.com/Nadine-MK/TB-characterization-paper.en_US
dc.descriptionSUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: SUPPLEMENTARY TABLE 1. Summary of information available on Mycobacterium infections in wild meerkats in the Kalahari, South Africa.en_US
dc.descriptionFIGURE S1. Patterns of TB exposure, prevalence of clinical signs and TB-related death over 27 years of research at the Kalahari Meerkat Project (South Africa) illustrating the inter-annual variation and development of TB prevalence within the study population. The numbers of A) study groups and B) study individuals of the study population being not exposed yet (green), exposed (blue), displaying clinical signs of TB (orange) or dying with confirmed TB (red). Means ± SD of each measure were calculated in 3-month increments.en_US
dc.descriptionFIGURE S2. Life trajectories of meerkats (n = 3420). For each individual, respective first (birth or entering into the study population) and last (death or disappearance) dates, as well as transitions between TB states are shown. Individuals were on average exposed to TB for 1.4 years before the onset of clinical signs and survived on average until 6.6 months after developing clinical TB. Individuals are sorted by birth date.en_US
dc.description.abstractInfections with tuberculosis (TB)-causing agents of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex threaten human, livestock and wildlife health globally due to the high capacity to cross trans-species boundaries. Tuberculosis is a cryptic disease characterized by prolonged, sometimes lifelong subclinical infections, complicating disease monitoring. Consequently, our understanding of infection risk, disease progression, and mortality across species affected by TB remains limited. The TB agent Mycobacterium suricattae was first recorded in the late 1990s in a wild population of meerkats inhabiting the Kalahari in South Africa and has since spread considerably, becoming a common cause of meerkat mortality. This offers an opportunity to document the epidemiology of naturally spreading TB in a wild population. Here, we synthesize more than 25 years’ worth of TB reporting and social interaction data across 3420 individuals to track disease spread, and quantify rates of TB social exposure, progression, and mortality. We found that most meerkats had been exposed to the pathogen within eight years of first detection in the study area, with exposure reaching up to 95% of the population. Approximately one quarter of exposed individuals progressed to clinical TB stages, followed by physical deterioration and death within a few months. Since emergence, 11.6% of deaths were attributed to TB, although the true toll of TB-related mortality is likely higher. Lastly, we observed marked variation in disease progression among individuals, suggesting inter-individual differences in both TB susceptibility and resistance. Our results highlight that TB prevalence and mortality could be higher than previously reported, particularly in species or populations with complex social group dynamics. Long-term studies, such as the present one, allow us to assess temporal variation in disease prevalence and progression and quantify exposure, which is rarely measured in wildlife. Long-term studies are highly valuable tools to explore disease emergence and ecology and study host–pathogen co-evolutionary dynamics in general, and its impact on social mammals.en_US
dc.description.departmentMammal Research Instituteen_US
dc.description.librarianhj2022en_US
dc.description.sponsorshipHuman Frontier Science Program; European Research Council; MAVA Foundation; Swiss National Science Foundation; Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.en_US
dc.description.urihttp://wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/tbeden_US
dc.identifier.citationMüller-Klein, N., Risely, A., Schmid, D. W., Manser, M., Clutton-Brock, T., & Sommer, S. (2022). Two decades of tuberculosis surveillance reveal disease spread, high levels of exposure and mortality and marked variation in disease progression in wild meerkats. Transboundary and Emerging Diseases, 69, 3274–3284. https://doi.org/10.1111/tbed.14679.en_US
dc.identifier.doi10.1111/tbed.14679
dc.identifier.issn1865-1674 (print)
dc.identifier.issn1865-1682 (online)
dc.identifier.urihttps://repository.up.ac.za/handle/2263/88665
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.publisherWileyen_US
dc.rights© 2022 The Authors. Transboundary and Emerging Diseases published by Wiley-VCH GmbH. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License.en_US
dc.subjectIndividual life-history trajectoriesen_US
dc.subjectLong-term surveillanceen_US
dc.subjectMeerkat (Suricata suricatta)en_US
dc.subjectSouth Africa (SA)en_US
dc.subjectTuberculosis (TB)en_US
dc.subjectMycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB)en_US
dc.subjectWildlife diseaseen_US
dc.titleTwo decades of tuberculosis surveillance reveal disease spread, high levels of exposure and mortality and marked variation in disease progression in wild meerkatsen_US
dc.typeArticleen_US

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