Congratulations to One Health EJP PhD student Marieke de Cock for her publication in Transboundary and Emerging Diseases! Marieke works at National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), the Netherlands, on PhD project DESIRE.
Her research focuses on assessing the current hazard and risk of rat-borne zoonoses for public health in the Netherlands. Rats can host a wide range of infectious disease agents that are transmissible to humans. Surveillance for rat-borne infections is important since human and rat populations live closely together in urban environments.
Her published article described a study that compared different pathogen detection methods to identify potentially zoonotic pathogens from rat kidney and liver samples. The molecular techniques used identified 14 potentially zoonotic bacteria and one potentially zoonotic virus. Microbiome profiling shows promise for the surveillance of rat-borne zoonotic bacteria.
Thanks to all co-authors for their contributions to this publication:
de Cock, M., Fonville, M., de Vries, A., Bossers, A., van den Bogert, B., Hakze-van der Honing, R., Koets, A., Sprong, H., van der Poel, W., & Maas, M. (2022). Screen the unforeseen: Microbiome profiling for detection of zoonotic pathogens in wild rats. Transboundary and Emerging Diseases. 00, 1– 15. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/tbed.14759
Read this research article here.
