A new study has found that the risk of people developing sepsis, meningitis or pneumonia as a result of exposure to air pollution is influenced by the specific bacterial strains that an individual carries within their microbiome.
The study, whose findings were published in the journal Nature Microbiology on September 14 this year, was conducted by a joint team from the South African National Institute of Communicable Diseases, the Supercomputing Center in Barcelona, Spain, together with other collaborators.
The researchers focused on Streptococcus pneumoniae, a bacterium that lives within the respiratory microbiome. It typically lives inside the throat and nose, and most children and adults with this bacterium don’t exhibit any symptoms of infection. However, when the microbes move into the bloodstream or lower sections of the respiratory tract like the lungs, the person can develop IPD (invasive pneumococcal disease).
IPD can manifest as meningitis, pneumonia and bacterial sepsis. IPD is a major cause of mortality globally and often peaks in the colder months of the year. The researchers wanted to find out how IPD outbreaks were connected to air pollution.
They obtained 19 years of data on diagnosed IPD cases in the Republic of South Africa. A total of 59,000 incidents were analyzed.
The analysis of the data revealed that the various subtypes of Streptococcus pneumoniae responded in different ways after exposure to air pollution. Some subtypes, such as 19A, 8 and 14 carried the highest likelihood of IPD infection when individuals were exposed to air pollution.
The researchers also found that some subtypes triggered infection almost immediately upon exposure to air pollution while others had a longer lapse that could span a fortnight or more before disease manifested.
The team noted that higher temperatures coinciding with air pollution tended to raise disease risk while cold temperatures triggered delays in disease outbreaks.
The researchers suggest that environmental monitoring should be integrated with genomic surveillance of Streptococcus pneumoniae so that infection spikes can be predicted. Additionally, vaccination strategies can be tweaked based on the data obtained, and healthcare workers can be given a heads-up during times of air pollution.
The findings of this study suggest that when air pollution is reduced in areas of large population concentrations, such as in cities, a corresponding benefit of lowering infectious disease risks can also be realized. The specific subtypes of bacteria in an area have a bearing on the specific disease risks present there during times of elevated air pollution.
Equally important in the fight against these infectious diseases is the need to have reliable diagnostic tools as close to the target population as possible. Unfortunately, most advanced diagnostic tools tend to be concentrated in specialized labs, and this often creates delays in catching outbreaks early. Efforts by firms like Co-Diagnostics Inc. (NASDAQ: CODX) to develop test kits that can be used at home and in field conditions could help in filling this gap.
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