Abstract

Leptospirosis is a worldwide bacterial zoonosis which incidence is expected to increase in conjunction with global change. In urban ecosystems, synanthropic rats are the key source of Leptospira infection in humans and other animals. Risk assessment and prediction of human leptospirosis require investigations of the environment associated with the bacteria and infection patterns in the reservoir hosts. The objective of this study was to address the prevalence of mixed Leptospira infection in the lungs and kidneys of brown rats captured in three sites of the city centre of Vienna, Austria, between 2016 and 2018. A total of 96 brown rats were examined for the presence of Leptospira using PCR. Occurrence of mixed Leptospira infections was explored through next-generation sequencing (NGS). A logistic regression model was built to predict the individual infection status using morphological and land-use data. Overall, the prevalence of Leptospira interrogans in the kidney was 25% but varied among sites (0–36%). We did not evidence any pulmonary nor mixed infections. Host body mass and sex were strong predictors of Leptospira carriage in the sampled rats (relative variable importance (RVI) = 0.98 and 0.89, respectively) while the presence of water affected it moderately (RVI = 0.44). Our findings demonstrate that NGS is an unbiased approach to the direct characterisation of mixed leptospiral infections that could provide further insights into the ecology of Leptospira. Future surveillance programmes should consider the use of rats as sentinels for the early detection of emerging pathogenic Leptospira in urban ecosystems.

Highlights

  • IntroductionVienna, Austria 5 Institut Pasteur, Biology of Spirochetes Unit, National Reference

  • Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.Medicine, Vienna, Austria 4 Konrad Lorenz Institute for Ethology, University of VeterinaryMedicine, Vienna, Austria 5 Institut Pasteur, Biology of Spirochetes Unit, National ReferenceCenter for Leptospirosis, Paris, France 6 Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA 7 Wildlife Conservation Society, Wildlife Health Program, Bronx, NY, USAData on global trends in urbanization indicates that by 2050 the global population will be 68% urban, with the number of urban dwellers reaching 6.7 billion (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division 2019)

  • Rattus norvegicus were trapped between September 2016 and November 2018 in three sites highly frequented by humans in the city centre of Vienna, Austria: i) at a promenade along the Danube canal (mean coordinates of the trapped rats: 16.36540, 48.22633 decimal degrees (D.D.)), ii) at Karlsplatz

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Summary

Introduction

Vienna, Austria 5 Institut Pasteur, Biology of Spirochetes Unit, National Reference. The brown (or Norway) rat, Rattus norvegicus (Berkenhout, 1769), has colonised all continents except Antarctica (Feng and Himsworth 2014). It is very prolific in urban and sub-urban ecosystems and is a successful urban exploiter (McKinney 2006). Beside the damage they cause to urban infrastructures and foodstuff (Battersby et al 2008), they indirectly impact the mental health of urbanites (Byers et al 2019; Zahner et al 1985) while

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