title: Looking for Tropheryma whipplei source and reservoir in rural Senegal.
abstract: Tropheryma whipplei, the bacterium linked to Whipple's disease, is involved in acute infections and asymptomatic carriage. In rural Senegal, the prevalence of T. whipplei is generally high but is not homogeneous throughout households in the same village. We studied environmental samples collected in two Senegalese villages and conducted the survey to investigate the difference between households. Overall, the comparison between five households with very high T. whipplei prevalence and three households without any registered cases showed that the only difference was the presence of toilets in the latter (1/5 versus 3/3; P = 0.01423). Among the 1,002 environmental specimens (including domestic and synanthropic animals and dust sampled in households) tested for T. whipplei DNA, only four specimens were slightly positive. Humans are currently the predominant identified reservoir and source of T. whipplei in these populations. Limited access to toilets and exposure to human feces facilitate the fecal-oral transmission of T. whipplei.
authors.affiliation: Aix Marseille Université, Unité des Rickettsies, Unité de Recherche sur les Maladies Infectieuses et Tropicales Emergentes (URMITE), UM63, CNRS 7278, IRD 198, INSERM 1095, 13005 Marseille, France. kabinet1@hotmail.fr
authors.forename: Alpha Kabinet
authors.initials: AK
authors.lastname: Keita
authors.forename: Oleg
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Mediannikov
authors.forename: Pavel
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Ratmanov
authors.forename: Georges
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Diatta
authors.forename: Hubert
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Bassene
authors.forename: Clémentine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Roucher
authors.forename: Adama
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Tall
authors.forename: Cheikh
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Sokhna
authors.forename: Jean-François
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Trape
authors.forename: Didier
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Raoult
authors.forename: Florence
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Fenollar
mesh_terms: D004269:DNA, Bacterial / Q000235:genetics; D003625:Data Collection; D004197:Disease Reservoirs / Q000382:microbiology*; D018562:Disease Transmission, Infectious; D004777:Environment; D005191:Family Characteristics; D005243:Feces / Q000382:microbiology; D006801:Humans; D015995:Prevalence; D012424:Rural Population; D012675:Senegal / Q000453:epidemiology; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D054851:Tropheryma / Q000302:isolation & purification* / Q000472:pathogenicity; D008061:Whipple Disease / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000382:microbiology*
chemical_list: D004269:DNA, Bacterial