An unusual mortality of wild boars occurred in Italy from 2012 to 2015 due to Salmonella Choleraesuis infection. In order to confirm the occurrence of an outbreak of S. Choleraesuis in wild boars and to epidemically characterise the unique S. Choleraesuis biovar, a collection of isolates belonging to wild boars was investigated from the phenotypic, molecular and genomic points of view (PFGE and WGS). Moreover, the possibility of transmission to domestic pigs and humans, temporally and geographically close to the wild boar epidemic, was tested by also including in the panel isolates from infected domestic pigs and from one human case of infection. Wild boar isolates displayed a high genetic correlation, thus suggesting they are part of the same outbreak, with a common invasiveness potential. Conversely, no correlation between pig isolates and those from the other sources (wild boars and human) was found. However, the phylogenetic and PFGE analyses suggest a high degree of similarity between the human and the investigated wild boar outbreak isolates, implying the potential for the spread of Salmonella Choleraesuis among these species.
Keywords: Bacterial genomics; Infection diseases; Outbreak investigation; Salmonella; Whole genome sequencing; Wild boars.
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