How urbanization affects the epidemiology of emerging infectious diseases

Neiderud, Carl-Johan

doi:10.3402/iee.v5.27060

Cited by 461 publications

(443 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…These higher disease rates mean a corresponding need for investment in new types of health and social care. However, a number of constraints prevent the improvement of urban health, especially in developing countries (Crompton and Savioli 1993;Phillips 1993;Neiderud 2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Country-Level Socioeconomic Indicators Associated with Healthy Life Expectancy: Income, Urbanization, Schooling, and Internet Users: 2000–2012

Kim

2015

Soc Indic Res

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This study confirms the associations between healthy life expectancy (HLE) and country-level socioeconomic factors. Our analysis is based on HLE data of 178 countries obtained from the World Health Organization. Data on country-level socioeconomic indicators were obtained from the World Bank database and the United Nations. The associations between socioeconomic indicators and HLE are assessed using Pearson's correlation coefficients and multiple regression models. Our findings show significant positive correlations between HLE and the following country-level socioeconomic factors: national income level (INI: r = 0.775, p = 0.001), urban population (UP: r = 0.711, p = 0.001), mean years of schooling (MYS: r = 0.756, p = 0.001), and internet users (IU: r = 0.795, p = 0.001). Predictors of female and male HLE are used to build a model that predicts HLE by overall higher levels of INI, UP, MYS, and IU (R 2 = 0.724, p \ 0.001). Based on our results, country-level socioeconomic indicators seem to have an important effect on healthy life expectancy.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Country-Level Socioeconomic Indicators Associated with Healthy Life Expectancy: Income, Urbanization, Schooling, and Internet Users: 2000–2012

Kim

2015

Soc Indic Res

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“…Processes such as biological invasions may lead to novel parasite-host interactions and transmission opportunities, with the potential to affect human, wildlife, and ecosystem health and resilience (Dunn and Hatcher 2015). Urbanization is a phenomenon that accelerates and intensifies these impacts on the interactions of zoonotic diseases and their hosts (Mackenstedt et al 2015;Neiderud 2015). Particularly for urban rodents, the risk of disease spread should be higher in human-dominated habitat, like cities, due to the synanthropic behavior of these invasive animals .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Helminth Diversity in Synanthropic Rodents from an Urban Ecosystem

Hancke

Suárez

2017

EcoHealth

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Richness and diversity of parasites depend on a set of interrelated factors related to the characteristics of the host, the environment and the parasites itself. In the City of Buenos Aires, rodent communities vary according to landscape structure. The goal of this paper was to study the variations of helminth richness and diversity among invasive rodent species in different landscape units of the City of Buenos Aires. 73% of the rodents were parasitized with at least one of the 10 identified helminth species. Each rodent species presented its own characteristics in terms of richness, diversity and helminth composition, keeping these characteristics still occupying more than one landscape unit. The infracommunities with greater diversity corresponded to R. norvegicus due to its high values of parasitic richness, proportion of infected hosts and parasite prevalence. Instead, R. rattus and M. musculus infracommunities had lower diversity since a high percentage of them presented a unique helminth species. Within the city, the inhabitants of shantytowns would be the most exposed to zoonotic diseases transmitted by rodents due to high abundance of rodents harboring a high parasite load, including species like Hymenolepis nana and H. diminuta, recognized worldwide from a zoonotic aspect.

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“…Cities have been associated with altered parasite communities and altered infection dynamics (Fokidis et al, 2008;Evans et al, 2009;Giraudeau et al, 2014;Neiderud, 2015). For example, foraging behavior in cities is thought to enhance the prevalence of intestinal coccidians (Giraudeau et al, 2014), potentially driven by increasing contact rates at feeders (Becker et al, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Elevated Immune Gene Expression Is Associated with Poor Reproductive Success of Urban Blue Tits

et al. 2017

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Urban and forest habitats differ in many aspects that can lead to modifications of the immune system of wild animals. Altered parasite communities, pollution, and artificial light at night in cities have been associated with exacerbated inflammatory responses, with possibly negative fitness consequences, but few data are available from free-living animals. Here, we investigate how urbanization affects major immune pathways and experimentally test potentially contributing factors in blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus) from an urban and forest site. We first compared breeding adults by quantifying the mRNA transcript levels of proteins associated with anti-bacterial, anti-malarial (TLR4, LY86) and anti-helminthic (Type 2 transcription factor GATA3) immune responses. Adult urban and forest blue tits differed in gene expression, with significantly increased TLR4 and GATA3, but not LY86, in the city. We then experimentally tested whether these differences were environmentally induced by cross-fostering eggs between the sites and measuring mRNA transcripts in nestlings. The populations differed in reduced reproductive success, with a lower fledging success and lower fledgling weight recorded at the urban site. This mirrors the findings of our twin study reporting that the urban site was severely resource limited when compared to the forest. Because of low urban survival, robust gene expression data were only obtained from nestlings reared in the forest. Transcript levels in these nestlings showed no (TLR4, LY86), or weak (GATA3), differences according to their origin from forest or city nests, suggesting little genetic or maternal contribution to nestling immune transcript levels. Lastly, to investigate differences in parasite pressure between urban and forest sites, we measured the prevalence of malaria in adult and nestling blood. Prevalence was invariably high across environments and not associated with the transcript levels of the studied immune genes. Our results support the hypothesis that inflammatory pathways are activated in an urban environment and suggest that these differences are most likely induced by environmental factors.

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How urbanization affects the epidemiology of emerging infectious diseases

Cited by 461 publications

References 63 publications

Country-Level Socioeconomic Indicators Associated with Healthy Life Expectancy: Income, Urbanization, Schooling, and Internet Users: 2000–2012

Country-Level Socioeconomic Indicators Associated with Healthy Life Expectancy: Income, Urbanization, Schooling, and Internet Users: 2000–2012

Helminth Diversity in Synanthropic Rodents from an Urban Ecosystem

Elevated Immune Gene Expression Is Associated with Poor Reproductive Success of Urban Blue Tits

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