Potential distributions of Bacillus anthracis and Bacillus cereus biovar anthracis causing anthrax in Africa

PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases
Daniel Romero-AlvarezLindsay P Campbell

Abstract

Bacillus cereus biovar anthracis (Bcbva) is an emergent bacterium closely related to Bacillus anthracis, the etiological agent of anthrax. The latter has a worldwide distribution and usually causes infectious disease in mammals associated with savanna ecosystems. Bcbva was identified in humid tropical forests of Côte d'Ivoire in 2001. Here, we characterize the potential geographic distributions of Bcbva in West Africa and B. anthracis in sub-Saharan Africa using an ecological niche modeling approach. Georeferenced occurrence data for B. anthracis and Bcbva were obtained from public data repositories and the scientific literature. Combinations of temperature, humidity, vegetation greenness, and soils values served as environmental variables in model calibrations. To predict the potential distribution of suitable environments for each pathogen across the study region, parameter values derived from the median of 10 replicates of the best-performing model for each pathogen were used. We found suitable environments predicted for B. anthracis across areas of confirmed and suspected anthrax activity in sub-Saharan Africa, including an east-west corridor from Ethiopia to Sierra Leone in the Sahel region and multiple areas in eastern, c...Continue Reading

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Citations

Nov 11, 2020·Toxins·Nadja JessbergerErwin Märtlbauer
May 4, 2021·Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition·Laura M CarrollJasna Kovac
Jun 11, 2021·Royal Society Open Science·Wendy C TurnerKyrre Kausrud

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Software Mentioned

MERRAclim
kuenm
ProMED
rts
Maxent
HealthMap
Bcbva
ENMTools R package
SoilGrids
MODIS Reprojection Tool

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