Sources, Seasonality, Transmission and Control: Campylobacter and human behaviour in a changing environment

Few of us would expect to die after a bout of diarrhoea. But the fact is that diarrhoeal disease kills. It can also lead to long-term, debilitating illnesses that adversely affect our industrial productivity and drain significant financial resource from our health and social services. Yet, much about what causes these potentially fatal diseases remains a mystery, not least because research to date has focused largely on one corner of the jigsaw. Our research will change this. Many of the organisms that cause diarrhoea occur naturally in animals. Some are easily transmitted to humans and have managed to adapt to - and thrive in - their new habitat. These organisms are abundant in the environment and there are countless ways for them to get into the human body. Until now, research has concentrated on contaminated food or water as the potential source of disease. No-one has yet studied the extent to which humans collude in their own misfortune. Is there something we do or fail to do that makes some of us more susceptible than others to these diseases? Our research unites experts from a wide variety of disciplines to answer these and other questions about what causes and spreads diarrhoeal disease. We will use Campylobacter spp, the most common bacterial cause of diarrhoea in the developed world, as our case study. In 2010, there were an estimated 700,000 cases of Campylobacter spp in the UK. Around 200 people died; others developed irritable bowel syndrome, arthritis and paralysis. The annual UK cost of acute Campylobacter infection alone tops #600 million, more than the cost of Salmonella, Listeria and E. coli O157 combined. Yet we still do not know how half the cases arose. About 40% of cases occur during the spring peak . Yet we know little if anything about what happens in the environment, or to our food supply, or to our own behaviour to cause this. So our research will investigate and capture what does happen - to us, to our environment and to society - at a number of different intervals, in a variety of locations and over a range of different time periods so we can understand how all these factors combine to influence Campylobacter infection. This type of analysis will benefit future research into how social and ecological systems interact with and affect other organisms that cross the species boundary between animals and people.