1 research outputs found
Joint sequencing of human and pathogen genomes reveals the genetics of pneumococcal meningitis
Streptococcus pneumoniae is a common nasopharyngeal colonizer, but can also cause lifethreatening invasive diseases such as empyema, bacteremia and meningitis. Genetic variation
of host and pathogen is known to play a role in invasive pneumococcal disease, though to
what extent is unknown. In a genome-wide association study of human and pathogen we
show that human variation explains almost half of variation in susceptibility to pneumococcal
meningitis and one-third of variation in severity, identifying variants in CCDC33 associated
with susceptibility. Pneumococcal genetic variation explains a large amount of invasive
potential (70%), but has no effect on severity. Serotype alone is insufficient to explain
invasiveness, suggesting other pneumococcal factors are involved in progression to invasive
disease. We identify pneumococcal genes involved