ArticleNature communications2022
Decomposing virulence to understand bacterial clearance in persistent infections.
Article in Nature communications, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 40 citations in OpenAlex.
- Drosophila melanogaster mitigates gastro-oral infections by stimulating pathogen expulsion.BMC microbiology · 2026Article
- Shielded by the dead: how killed bacteria shape the dynamics and evolution of innate immunity.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Article
- Immune-mediated indirect interaction between gut microbiota and bacterial pathogens.BMC biology · 2025Article
- Virulence Evolution: Thinking Outside of the Host.Evolutionary applications · 2025Article
- Pathogen-induced damage in Drosophila: Uncoupling disease tolerance from resistance.PLoS pathogens · 2025Article
- Clinical Isolates of Antimicrobial-Resistant Enterobacter Species Can Persist in Human Macrophages Without Replication and Overt Cellular Cytotoxicity.The Journal of infectious diseases · 2025Article
- Mechanisms of host exploitation by a microsporidian parasite.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Complex interactions in the life cycle of a simple parasite shape the evolution of virulence.PLoS pathogens · 2025Article
- Pathogen growth and virulence dynamics drive the host evolution against coinfections.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Dissecting transmission to understand parasite evolution.PLoS pathogens · 2025Review
- Article
- A Trade-Off Between Antimicrobial Peptide Resistance and Sensitivity to Host Immune Effectors inEvolutionary applications · 2025Article
- Essential oils modulate virulence phenotypes in a multidrug-resistant pyomelanogenic Pseudomonas aeruginosa clinical isolate.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Chronic bacterial infections exert metabolic costs in Drosophila melanogaster.The Journal of experimental biology · 2025Article
- Exposure to Pseudomonas spp. increases Anopheles gambiae insecticide resistance in a host-dependent manner.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- A specific innate immune response silences the virulence of Pseudomonas aeruginosa in a latent infection model in the Drosophila melanogaster host.PLoS pathogens · 2024Article
- Idiosyncratic effects of bacterial infection on female fecundity inCurrent research in insect science · 2024Article
- Delayed host mortality and immune response upon infection withInfection and immunity · 2023Article
- Virulence decomposition for bifurcating infections.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Following an infection, hosts cannot always clear the pathogen, instead either dying or surviving with a persistent infection. Such variation is ecologically and evolutionarily important because it can affect infection prevalence and transmission, and virulence evolution. However, the factors causing variation in infection outcomes, and the relationship between clearance and virulence are not well understood. Here we show that sustained persistent infection and clearance are both possible outcomes across bacterial species showing a range of virulence in Drosophila melanogaster. Variation in virulence arises because of differences in the two components of virulence: bacterial infection intensity inside the host (exploitation), and the amount of damage caused per bacterium (per parasite pathogenicity). As early-phase exploitation increased, clearance rates later in the infection decreased, whereas there was no apparent effect of per parasite pathogenicity on clearance rates. Variation in infection outcomes is thereby determined by how virulence - and its components - relate to the rate of pathogen clearance. Taken together we demonstrate that the virulence decomposition framework is broadly applicable and can provide valuable insights into host-pathogen interactions.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.