Genomic analysis of isolates from the United Kingdom 2012 pertussis outbreak reveals that vaccine antigen genes are unusually fast evolving

Katie L. Sealey, Simon R. Harris, Norman Fry, Laurence D. Hurst, Andrew Gorringe, Julian Parkhill, Andrew Preston*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

71 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

A major outbreak of whooping cough, or pertussis, occurred in 2012 in the United Kingdom (UK), with nearly 10 000 laboratory-confirmed cases and 14 infant deaths attributed to pertussis. A worldwide resurgence of pertussis has been linked to switch to the use of acellular pertussis vaccines and the evolution of Bordetella pertussis away from vaccine-mediated immunity. We have conducted genomic analyses of multiple strains from the UK outbreak. We show that the UK outbreak was polyclonal in nature, caused by multiple distinct but closely related strains. Importantly, we demonstrate that acellular vaccine antigen-encoding genes are evolving at higher rates than other surface protein-encoding genes. This was true even prior to the introduction of pertussis vaccines but has become more pronounced since the introduction of the current acellular vaccines. The fast evolution of vaccine antigen-encoding genes has serious consequences for the ability of current vaccines to continue to control pertussis.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)294-301
Number of pages8
JournalJournal of Infectious Diseases
Volume212
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 15 Jul 2015

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

Keywords

  • evolution
  • genomics
  • pertussis
  • vaccine

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