Forecasting Zoonotic Infectious Disease Response to Climate Change: Mosquito Vectors and a Changing Environment

Abstract

Infectious diseases are changing due to the environment and altered interactions among hosts, reservoirs, vectors, and pathogens. This is particularly true for zoonotic diseases that infect humans, agricultural animals, and wildlife. Within the subset of zoonoses, vector-borne pathogens are changing more rapidly with climate change, and have a complex epidemiology, which may allow them to take advantage of a changing environment. Most mosquito-borne infectious diseases are transmitted by mosquitoes in three genera: Aedes, Anopheles, and Culex, and the expansion of these genera is well documented. There is an urgent need to study vector-borne diseases in response to climate change and to produce a generalizable approach capable of generating risk maps and forecasting outbreaks. Here, we provide a strategy for coupling climate and epidemiological models for zoonotic infectious diseases. We discuss the complexity and challenges of data and model fusion, baseline requirements for data, and animal and human population movement. Disease forecasting needs significant investment to build the infrastructure necessary to collect data about the environment, vectors, and hosts at all spatial and temporal resolutions. These investments can contribute to building a modeling community around the globe to support public health officials so as to reduce disease burden through forecasts with quantified uncertainty.

The impact of biological invasion and genomic local adaptation on the geographical distribution of Aedes aegypti in Panama

“…Since environmental adaptation is an important driving factor promoting genomic differentiation within mosquito disease vectors, this should be considered in spatially predictive models. Currently, species geographic distribution or disease prediction models incorporate a set of environmental parameters coupled with a predicted outcome on mosquito biology and abundance without considering adaptive response (54,55). Assuming that the whole population will respond to environmental precursors as a homogenous unit is erroneous when local adaptation is present.…”

Beyond diversity loss and climate change: Impacts of Amazon deforestation on infectious diseases and public health

“…In addition to directly affecting the health of unvaccinated individuals, this phenomenon may impact the herd immunity of the vaccinated population. Moreover, migrants may introduce new pathogens in populations not originally affected by the disease (Confalonieri 2000, Coura et al 2002, Aguilar et al 2007, Castelli & Sulis 2017, Bartlow et al 2019, Grillet et al 2019.…”

Understanding Flavivirus Capsid Protein Functions: The Tip of the Iceberg

“…Of these, roughly half are mosquito-borne, including the heavily studied: yellow fever (YFV), West Nile (WNV), dengue (DENV), Japanese encephalitis (JEV), and Zika (ZIKV) viruses, which will be the focus of this review [2]. These viruses appear to affect tropic and sub-tropic regions but pose a serious global health risk due to geographic expansion of mosquito vectors [3][4][5].Only a small subset of infections result in symptoms, ranging from mild fever to hemorrhagic fever or encephalitis to potentially death. The 2015-2016 outbreak of ZIKV in South America was also associated with microcephaly in infants and the development of Guillain-Barre syndrome in adults [2,6].…”