Citizen science, showerheads, and the ecology of an emerging disease

Nearly 200,000 individuals in the United States suffer from pulmonary nontuberculous mycobacterial (NTM) disease. NTM infections are slow-progressing, chronic, often resistant to treatment, and have cost the United States over $1.7 billion per year in treatment costs. Unfortunately, it is not known why the disease is increasing in prevalence, why some regions have higher rates of NTM disease, and what can be done to reduce the risk of acquiring the disease. CIRES Fellow Noah Fierer and CIRES research associate Matt Gerbert are working to answer these questions. The team's work will focus on how the abundances and diversity of showerhead-associated mycobacteria vary regionally across the United States, and how exposures to pathogenic mycobacteria vary as a function of water chemistry, household water source, and showerhead characteristics. The team has designed a unique citizen-science-based study to investigate these questions. Thousands of U.S. households will receive showerhead swabbing kits to gather bacterial samples, which the research team will analyze to extract and sequence DNA to characterize bacterial taxa. This study will highlight the utility of combining a citizen scientist-based approach and cutting-edge microbial ecology methods to study an emerging infectious disease, as well as strengthen ties with collaborators at National Institutes of Health and the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.