Bacterial shedding and serologic responses following an outbreak of Salmonella Typhi in an endemic cohort.

BACKGROUND: Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi (Salmonella Typhi) is the cause of typhoid fever. Salmonella Typhi may be transmitted through shedding in the stool, which can continue after recovery from acute illness. Shedding is detected by culturing stool, which is challenging to co-ordinate at scale. We hypothesised that sero-surveillance would direct us to those shedding Salmonella Typhi in stool following a typhoid outbreak. METHODS: In 2016 a typhoid outbreak affected one in four residents of a Nursing School in Malosa, Malawi. The Department of Health asked for assistance to identify nursing students that might spread the outbreak to other health facilities. We measured IgG antibody titres against Vi capsular polysaccharide (anti-Vi IgG) and IgM / IgG antibodies against H:d flagellin (anti-H:d) three and six months after the outbreak. We selected participants in the highest and lowest deciles for anti-Vi IgG titre (measured at visit one) and obtained stool for Salmonella culture and PCR. All participants reported whether they had experienced fever persisting for three days or more during the outbreak (in keeping with the WHO definitions of 'suspected typhoid'). We tested for salmonellae in the Nursing School environment. RESULTS: We obtained 320 paired serum samples from 407 residents. We cultured stool from 25 residents with high anti-Vi IgG titres and 24 residents with low titres. We did not recover Salmonella Typhi from stool; four stool samples yielded non-typhoidal salmonellae; one sample produced a positive PCR amplification for a Salmonella Typhi target. Median anti-Vi and anti-H:d IgG titres fell among participants who reported persistent fever. There was a smaller fall in anti-H:d IgG titres among participants who did not report persistent fever. Non-typhoidal salmonellae were identified in water sampled at source and from a kitchen tap. CONCLUSION: High titres of anti-Vi IgG did not identify culture-confirmed shedding of Salmonella Typhi. There was a clear serologic signal of recent typhoid exposure in the cohort, represented by waning IgG antibody titres over time. The presence of non-typhoidal salmonellae in drinking water indicates sub-optimal sanitation. Developing methods to detect and treat shedding remains an important priority to complement typhoid conjugate vaccination in efforts to achieve typhoid elimination.

Performance of molecular methods for the detection of Salmonella in human stool specimens.

Background: The relationship between asymptomatic Salmonella exposure within the gastrointestinal tract and Salmonella bacteraemia is poorly understood, in part due to the low sensitivity of stool culture, and the lack of validated molecular diagnostic tests for the detection of Salmonella in stool. The study aimed to determine a reliable molecular diagnostic test for Salmonella in stool specimens. Methods: We optimized an in-house monoplex real time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for the detection of Salmonella TTR and InvA genes in stool by including a selenite broth pre-culture step for Salmonella before DNA extraction, and validated their specificity against other local common pathogens. Then we assessed their performance  against a well-validated multiplex PCR targeting the same TTR and InvA genes, and against stool culture using clinical stool specimens collected from a cohort of 50 asymptomatic healthy Malawian children that were sampled at 1-month intervals over a period of 12 months. We employed a latent Markov model to estimate the specificities and sensitivities of PCR methods. Results: TTR and InvA primers were both able to detect all the different Salmonella serovars tested, and had superior limits of detection if DNA was extracted after selenite pre-culture. TTR sensitivity and specificity for monoplex-PCR were (99.53%, 95.46%) and for multiplex-PCR (90.30%, 99.30%) respectively. InvA specificity and specificity for using monoplex-PCR was (95.06%, 90.31%) and multiplex-PCRs (89.41%, 98.00%) respectively. Sensitivity and specificity for standard stool culture were 62.88% and 99.99% respectively. Culture showed the highest PPV (99.73%) and mono-TTR had the highest NPV (99.67%). Conclusion: Test methods demonstrated high concordance although stool culture and monoplexed TTR primers had superior specificity and sensitivity respectively. The use of selenite pre-enrichment step increased Salmonella detection rate. Taken together, molecular detection methods used here could be used to reveal the true extent of both asymptomatic and symptomatic Salmonella exposure events.