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Escherichia coli sequence type 73 bloodstream infections in a centralized Canadian region and their association with companion animals: an ecological study

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Abstract

Purpose

Extraintestinal pathogenic E. coli (ExPEC) are important pathogens causing community-acquired infections in humans, including bloodstream infections (BSIs), and may also colonize and infect animals. Our aim was to investigate associations between incidence rates (IRs) of BSIs caused by ExPEC and number of dogs and cats in communities in Calgary.

Methods

We used a well-characterized collection of blood isolates (n = 685) from Calgary, Alberta, Canada (2016). We used a combination of a seven-single-nucleotide-polymorphism quantitative PCR to type ExPEC into sequence types (STs). Calgary census data were used to estimate IRs per city community, as well as to investigate associations between number of companion animals per community, as obtained from licensing data, and IR of BSIs caused by each dominant ST.

Results

From the 685 isolates available, ExPEC ST131 was most prevalent (21.3% of included isolates), followed by ST73 (13.7%), ST69 (8.2%), ST95 (6.7%), and ST1193 (5.3%), respectively. Incidence of BSIs caused by ExPECs among Calgary residents was 48.8 cases per 100,000 resident-years, whereas communities had on average of 1.7 companion animals per 10 residents. No association between the number of dogs and IR of BSIs caused by ExPECs was detected for any ST. Conversely, the incidence rate of BSIs caused by ST73 was 3.6 times higher (95%CI 1.3–9.99) for every increase of 1 cat per 10 habitants in communities.

Conclusions

Number of cats per habitant was positively associated with the incidence of BSIs caused by ExPEC ST73.

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Acknowledgements

We thank M. S. Holland for obtaining the clinical epidemiological data.

Funding

This work was supported by a research grant from the Joint Programming Initiative on Antimicrobial Resistance /Canadian Institute Health Research (#10016015).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Population Medicine, Ontario Veterinary College, University of Guelph, 50 Stone Road East, Guelph, ON, N1G 2W1, Canada

    Diego Nobrega

  2. Division of Microbiology, Alberta Precision Laboratories, Calgary, AB, Canada

    Gisele Peirano & Johann D. D. Pitout

  3. Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Calgary, Cummings School of Medicine, Calgary, AB, Canada

    Gisele Peirano & Johann D. D. Pitout

  4. Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Infectious Diseases, University of Calgary, Cummings School of Medicine, Calgary, AB, Canada

    Johann D. D. Pitout

  5. Department of Medical Microbiology, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa

    Johann D. D. Pitout

Authors
  1. Diego Nobrega
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  2. Gisele Peirano
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  3. Johann D. D. Pitout
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Diego Nobrega.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Compliance with ethical standards

All procedures performed involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and national research committees.

Ethical approval

Ethics approval for this study was obtained through the University of Calgary Conjoint Health Research Ethics Board (REB16-2457).

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Nobrega, D., Peirano, G. & Pitout, J.D.D. Escherichia coli sequence type 73 bloodstream infections in a centralized Canadian region and their association with companion animals: an ecological study. Infection 50, 1579–1585 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s15010-022-01856-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s15010-022-01856-1

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