Credit: NASAResearch overturns previous beliefs about Salmonella contamination sources in North Carolina, pointing to rivers and streams instead of pig farms, and calls for modified illness control strategies.Researchers report in the journal Geohealth that local rivers and streams were the source of the Salmonella enterica contamination along seaside North Carolina after Hurricane Florence in 2018– not the formerly thought high number of pig farms in the region.Implications for Disease ControlThese findings have critical implications for controlling the spread of disease caused by antibiotic-resistant pathogens after flooding events, especially in the coastal areas of developing countries that are being extremely affected by the boost in tropical storms.The study, led by University of Illinois Urbana-Chamapaign environmental and civil engineering professor Helen Nguyen and graduate student Yuqing Mao, tracks the existence and origin of S. enterica from ecological samples from seaside North Carolina utilizing hereditary tracing.Graduate student Yuqing Mao, left, and teacher Helen Nguyen.”Coastal North Carolina is a fantastic case study location due to the fact that there is a high concentration of swine farms and private septic systems, and seaside flooding triggered by tropical storms is fairly typical,” Nguyen said.Three weeks after Hurricane Florence, Nguyens team collected 25 water samples from water bodies downstream of the swine farms in agricultural production areas in North Carolina, 23 of which consisted of the S. enterica germs.”Nguyens team plans to extend this research beyond seaside regions and is teaming up with other school scientists to study the spread of pathogens from Canada goose feces in Illinois.Reference: “Local and Environmental Reservoirs of Salmonella enterica After Hurricane Florence Flooding” by Yuqing Mao, Mohamed Zeineldin, Moiz Usmani, Antarpreet Jutla, Joanna L. Shisler, Rachel J. Whitaker and Thanh H. Nguyen, 3 November 2023, GeoHealth.DOI: 10.1029/ 2023GH000877Researchers from the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, the Carle Illinois College of Medicine and the University of Florida likewise contributed to this study.The IGB, The Grainger College of Engineering, the Allen Foundation, and the EPA supported this study.
