New drug-resistant Salmonella variant behind an epidemic across sub-Saharan Africa

[phantom power]

A deadly version of an intestinal germ has spread through sub-Saharan Africa, helped by genetic mutation and diseases such as HIV that weaken the immune system and expose the body to infection, researchers said Sunday.

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iNTS kills between 22 and 45 percent of those it infects and is suspected to be transmitted from human to human, previous research has found.

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The answer, according to the study, lies in part from genes that Salmonella Typhimurium picked up in Africa which shield it from frontline antibiotics and help it survive in a human host.

The novel strain “is causing a previously unrecognised epidemic” across sub-Saharan Africa, said Chinyere Okoro of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Britain, who co-authored the study.

“Its genetic makeup is evolving into a more typhoid-like bacteria, able to efficiently spread around the human body.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/09/30/new-drug-resistant-salmonella-variant-behind-an-epidemic-across-sub-saharan-africa/

[xchrom]

1. HIV 'made' new deadly Salmonella - study

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-19727630

An epidemic of a deadly strain of Salmonella has swept across the whole of Africa by "taking advantage" of the spread of HIV, according to an international team of researchers.

Their study, published in Nature Genetics, said weakened immune systems caused by HIV allowed it to spread.

One in four people in Africa infected with the strain died.

It is thought to be the first time a bug has spread so widely in the wake of HIV.