Cristina Sotomayor Australian Society for Microbiology Annual Scientific Meeting 2014

Cristina Sotomayor

I’m a year 2 Ph D student from Chile, learning and doing research on the food-borne diseases area, particularly on Salmonella, at the Centre for Infectious Diseases and Microbiology, ICPMR, located in Westmead Public Hospital. I have a MSc in Public Health and Epidemiology from UACh, Valdivia, Chile. Diseases caused by the consumption of contaminated food, have emerged as an important cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Some countries, including Chile and Australia, have experienced an increased presentation of salmonella related cases lately, particularly among the serovars enteritidis and typhimurium. This last one, is a particularly epidemic serotype with a ubiquitous host range that is commonly responsible for clinical disease in both livestock and humans. It is the most common isolated serovar found in NSW (over 50% from 2001 till now), linked to specific changes involving food production chain; its persistence in time is ensured by the overall lack of effective control and prevention measures. Molecular typing methods such as MLST and MLVA have been used for further discrimination of Salmonella serovars; this has allowed the identification of particularly successful clones among NSW territory for the last 5 years period, optimizing and strengthening the current epidemiological surveillance protocols through the recognition of these circulating clones. Further analysis, including whole genome sequencing will add powerful information to the current situation of salmonellosis in NSW and Chile. The general aims of my current research is (1) to analize traditional and molecular epidemiology present in community outbreaks from Chile and NSW caused by Salmonella serovar typhimurium, (2) to compare temporo-spatial patterns in these community outbreaks as an active surveillance tool. My work is supervised by A/Prof Dr. Vitali Sintchenko.