Many zoonotic infections are mild but some may lead to fatal diseases, for example, rabies, the Nipah (NiV) and Hendra viruses, and in haemorrhagic fevers – the Marburg and Ebola viruses.
A research team, led by Professor Wanda Markotter at the Centre for Viral Zoonoses (UP-CVZ) conducts surveillance of African bat populations to understand the diversity, distribution and circulation patterns of bat-borne viruses and the potential threat to veterinary and public health. The study of bat infectious agents has been further expanded by the research of a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre, Dr Muriel Dietrich, who combines field sampling in bat caves, molecular work and bioinformatics approaches to investigate bacterial communities in bat populations in South Africa.
Using powerful metagenomic research tools, the researchers have investigated the composition of the bacterial microbiota in bats (a collective term for the bacteria that live in or on the body). They have identified highly diverse and specific bacterial communities in samples that are implicated in pathogen transmission in bats, such as urine, faeces and saliva. In addition to commensal bacteria (part of the normal microflora), the researchers have also found that bats excrete bacteria that may cause disease in humans, such as Leptospira, Rickettsia, Bartonella and Coxiella, highlighting the possibility that bats may be the reservoir of human bacterial pathogens.
As the resident microbiota are thought to play a significant role in host susceptibility to pathogens, unravelling the interactions between the microbiota, the host and potential human pathogens will help understand the role of bats as reservoirs of zoonotic infectious agents, and the risk of transmission to humans.
