Serratia marcescens is a broad host-range pathogen and is capable of opportunistic infections of humans. As a member of the Enterobacteriaceae, it is related to Escherichia and Shigella, Salmonella and Yersinia. It is implicated in a wide range of serious infections including pneumonia, lower respiratory tract infection, urinary tract infection, bloodstream infection, wound infection and meningitis. The organism has also been described as an important cause of ocular infection with high incidence in contact lens-related keratitis.
Yes it cause wide range of infection because it is an cosmopolitic organism and also reported in marine environment as well.
No, it is not possible to determine the location of the origin of this type of bacteria. Many of the reasons are similar to why we cannot locate the geographical origin of mammals or the geographical origin of butterflies. Serratia may have diverged from the common ancestor of Seratia/Escherichia/other Enterobacteria more than 200 million years ago and there is no chance of finding bacterial fossils that can be proven to be one species or the other. The enterobacteria were moving all over the world in the guts of fish and worms and other organisms before this evolutionary event, and they have continued to move all over the earth since then too.
I agree with the most of the answers above, but thought to share my experience with the pathogen as well. We have isolated it in Sri Lanka from intensive care patients with blood stream infections including line infections, UTI, pneumonia and wound infections. My experience of the pathogen in sepsis following snake bite had been published in 2014 in the bulletin of the Sri Lanka college of microbiologists in which I describe about 2 case reports. Also I have found similar cases following snake bite and iguana bite in the literature from Nepal, Taiwan and some other countries.
Cheers!
Riaan,
please consider as well plant pathogenic variants of Serratia spp. It is spreading to new host plants including ones consumed fresh.
Just for instance: Ignatov AN, Khodykina MV, Polityko VA, Sukhacheva MV, 2016. First report of Serratia marcescens causing yellow wilt disease on sunflower in Russia. New Disease Reports 33, 8. [http://dx.doi.org/10.5197/j.2044-0588.2016.033.008]
Regards
Alex
We may not be able to determine the geographic origin of the whole "species" Seratia marcesens but if there are specifc pathogenic variants of the species which have recently begun causing a disease in humans or plants, it could very well be possible to trace where the most recent source of this spread was. This may cost many millions of dollars or much less, depending on many aspects of the "outbreak" and the natural range of the organism. Some recent examples of this type of tracing are found by studying for example how the source of the enteropahtogenic E. coli (STEC serotype 0104H4-2011) which killed people in Europe in May-June 2011, was traced.
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