Abstract
We demonstrate country-wide exposures to aerosolized spores of a human fungal pathogen, Aspergillus fumigatus, that has acquired resistance to first line azole clinical antifungal drugs. Assisted by a network of citizen scientists across the United Kingdom, we show that 1 in 20 viable aerosolized spores of this mold are resistant to the agricultural fungicide tebuconazole and 1 in 140 spores are resistant to the four most used azoles for treating clinical aspergillosis infections. Season and proximity to industrial composters were associated with growth of A. fumigatus from air samples, but not with the presence of azole resistance, and hotspots were not stable between sampling periods suggesting a high degree of atmospheric mixing. Genomic analysis shows no distinction between those resistant genotypes found in the environment and in patients, indicating that ~40% (58/150 sequenced genomes) of azole-resistant A. fumigatus infections are acquired from environmental exposures. Due to the ubiquity of this measured exposure, it is crucial that we determine source(s) of azole-resistant A. fumigatus, who is at greatest risk of exposure and how to mitigate these exposures, in order to minimize treatment failure in patients with aspergillosis.
One sentence summary UK-wide citizen science surveillance finds a ubiquitous exposure to aerosolized spores of a human fungal pathogen that have evolved in the environment cross-resistance to essential clinical antifungal drugs
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
Footnotes
In the last line of Methods section "Identification of A. fumigatus cyp51A gene azole-resistance alleles" one of the sequencing primers has been replaced with its reverse compliment, such that one primer sequences forward and the other primer sequences in reverse to capture the entire cyp51a coding region.
