Rural Raccoons (Procyon lotor) Not Likely to Be a Major Driver of Antimicrobial Resistant Human Salmonella Cases in Southern Ontario, Canada: A One Health Epidemiological Assessment Using Whole-Genome Sequence Data
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Non-typhoidal Salmonella infections represent a substantial burden of illness in humans, and the increasing prevalence of antimicrobial resistance among these infections is a growing concern. Using a combination of Salmonella isolate short-read whole-genome sequence data from select human cases, raccoons, livestock and environmental sources, and an epidemiological framework, our objective was to determine if there was evidence for potential transmission of Salmonella and associated antimicrobial resistance determinants between these different sources in the Grand River watershed in Ontario, Canada. Logistic regression models were used to assess the potential associations between source type and the presence of select resistance genes and plasmid incompatibility types. A total of 608 isolates were obtained from the following sources: humans ( n = 58), raccoons ( n = 92), livestock ( n = 329), and environmental samples ( n = 129). Resistance genes of public health importance, including bla CMY−2 , were identified in humans, livestock, and environmental sources, but not in raccoons. Most resistance genes analyzed were significantly more likely to be identified in livestock and/or human isolates than in raccoon isolates. Based on a 3,002-loci core genome multi-locus sequence typing (cgMLST) scheme, human Salmonella isolates were often more similar to isolates from livestock and environmental sources, than with those from raccoons. Rare instances of serovars S . Heidelberg and S . Enteritidis in raccoons likely represent incidental infections and highlight possible acquisition and dissemination of predominantly poultry-associated Salmonella by raccoons within these ecosystems. Raccoon-predominant serovars were either not identified among human isolates ( S . Agona, S . Thompson) or differed by more than 350 cgMLST loci ( S . Newport). Collectively, our findings suggest that the rural population of raccoons on swine farms in the Grand River watershed are unlikely to be major contributors to antimicrobial resistant human Salmonella cases in this region.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".