Søren Persson

Research area

• Development of WGS-based methods for typing and detection of outbreaks and antibiotic resistance to support surveillance of C. difficile.
• Research on C. difficile epidemiology and typing in relation to outbreaks, mortality and transmission.
• Development of metagenomic methods for culture independent diagnostics and typing of gastrointestinal pathogens directly on DNA extracted from clinical samples.

Responsibilities

• National and international surveillance of C. difficile and development of methods for diagnostics and typing. 
• Coordinating research projects to investigate C. difficile epidemiology and mortality associated with typing data. 
• Development of metagenomic methods for culture independent diagnostics and typing of bacterial pathogens. 

Publications

• Bjöersdorff OG, Lindberg S, Kiil K, Persson S, Guardabassi L, Damborg P. (2021). Dogs are carriers of Clostridioides difficile lineages associated with human community-acquired infections. Anaerobe 2021 (67).
  
  
• Costea PI, Zeller G, Sunagawa S, Pelletier E, Alberti A, Levenez F, Tramontano M, Driessen M, Hercog R, Jung FE, Kultima JR, Hayward MR, Coelho LP, Allen-Vercoe E, Bertrand L, Blaut M, Brown JRM, Carton T, Cools-Portier S, Daigneault M, Derrien M, Druesne A, de Vos WM, Finlay BB, Flint HJ, Guarner F, Hattori M, Heilig H, Luna RA, van Hylckama Vlieg J, Junick J, Klymiuk I, Langella P, Le Chatelier E, Mai V, Manichanh C, Martin JC, Mery C, Morita H, O'Toole PW, Orvain C, Patil KR, Penders J, Persson S, Pons N, Popova M, Salonen A, Saulnier D, Scott KP, Singh B, Slezak K, Veiga P, Versalovic J, Zhao L, Zoetendal EG, Ehrlich SD, Dore J, Bork P. Towards standards for human fecal sample processing in metagenomic studies. Nat Biotechnol. 2017 Nov;35(11):1069-1076. doi: 10.1038/nbt.3960. Epub 2017 Oct 2. PubMed PMID: 28967887.
  
  
• Andersen SC, Kiil K, Harder CB, Josefsen MH, Persson S, Nielsen EM, Hoorfar J. Towards diagnostic metagenomics of Campylobacter in fecal samples. BMC Microbiol. 2017 Jun 8;17(1):133. doi: 10.1186/s12866-017-1041-3. PubMed PMID: 28595575; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC5465461.
  
  
• Kvistholm Jensen A, Nielsen EM, Björkman JT, Jensen T, Müller L, Persson S, Bjerager G, Perge A, Krause TG, Kiil K, Sørensen G, Andersen JK, Mølbak K, Ethelberg S. Whole-genome Sequencing Used to Investigate a Nationwide Outbreak of Listeriosis Caused by Ready-to-eat Delicatessen Meat, Denmark, 2014. Clin Infect Dis. 2016 Jul 1;63(1):64-70. doi: 10.1093/cid/ciw192. Epub 2016 Mar 29. PubMed PMID: 27025820. 
  
  
• Søes LM, Brock I, Persson S, Simonsen J, Pribil Olsen KE, Kemp M. Clinical features of Clostridium difficile infection and molecular characterization of the isolated strains in a cohort of Danish hospitalized patients. Eur J Clin Microbiol Infect Dis. 2012 Feb;31(2):185-92. doi: 10.1007/s10096-011-1292-0. Epub 2011 Jul 10. PubMed PMID: 21744281.