Detection of Emerging Zoonotic Pathogens: An Integrated One Health Approach

Abstract

The emergence of novel zoonotic pathogens is one of the greatest challenges to global health security. The advent of increasingly sophisticated diagnostics tools has revolutionized our capacity to detect and respond to these health threats more rapidly than ever before. Yet, no matter how sophisticated these tools become, the initial identification of emerging infectious diseases begins at the local community level. It is here that the initial human or animal case resides, and it is here that early pathogen detection would have maximum benefit. Unfortunately, many areas at highest risk of zoonotic disease emergence lack sufficient infrastructure capacity to support robust laboratory diagnostic systems. Multiple factors are essential for pathogen detection networks, including an understanding of the complex sociological and ecological factors influencing disease transmission risk, community engagement, surveillance along high-risk human-animal interfaces, and a skilled laboratory workforce. Here we discuss factors relevant to the emerging disease paradigm, recent technical advances in diagnostic methods, and strategies for comprehensive and sustainable approaches to rapid zoonotic disease detection.

Genetic diversity of primate strongylid nematodes: Do sympatric nonhuman primates and humans share their strongylid worms?

“…Understanding the epidemiology of multihost pathogens is considered a major challenge in infectious disease research (Bowden & Drake, 2013;Webster, Borlase, & Rudge, 2017;Woolhouse, Taylor, & Haydon, 2001). In recent decades the global and local impacts of multihost diseases, particularly emerging zoonotic diseases, on human health and economy have resulted in attempts to unravel transmission patterns among all host-species involved (Bird & Mazet, 2018;Morens & Fauci, 2013;Wang & Crameri, 2014). However, epidemiological theory still remains focused on single-pathogen singlehost systems (Antonovics, 2017) and many control programmes for zoonotic diseases target only humans (Morse et al, 2012).…”

Nocardiosis and mycobacteriosis of bivalves: “Yet‐to‐emerge” zoonoses of public concern?

“…Novel zoonotic pathogens are among the greatest challenges to global health security (Bird & Mazet, 2018). Accordingly, the key event to succeed in fighting zoonoses is detecting "yet-to-emerge" novel pathogens from animal reservoirs and human population as quickly as possible (Bird & Mazet, 2018).…”

“…Novel zoonotic pathogens are among the greatest challenges to global health security (Bird & Mazet, 2018). Accordingly, the key event to succeed in fighting zoonoses is detecting "yet-to-emerge" novel pathogens from animal reservoirs and human population as quickly as possible (Bird & Mazet, 2018). Among the characteristics these pathogens must express, to make us suspect their potential danger, the sudden change of their biology, a jump of host species, the involvement in episodes of illness not detected previously, even if on a simple local scale, are underlined (Bird & Mazet, 2018).…”

LINbase: A Web service for genome-based identification of microbes as members of crowdsourced taxa

“…Fast and precise pathogen identification is crucial in human, animal, and plant disease diagnosis to identify the most effective treatment and to limit disease spread [1]. Precise identification of microbes is also important in many other fields, for example, when regulating commercial probiotics for human consumption [2] or biopesticides to control plant diseases in agriculture [3].…”