Climate variability and change in the United States: potential impacts on vector- and rodent-borne diseases.

Abstract

Diseases such as plague, typhus, malaria, yellow fever, and dengue fever, transmitted between humans by blood-feeding arthropods, were once common in the United States. Many of these diseases are no longer present, mainly because of changes in land use, agricultural methods, residential patterns, human behavior, and vector control. However, diseases that may be transmitted to humans from wild birds or mammals (zoonoses) continue to circulate in nature in many parts of the country. Most vector-borne diseases exhibit a distinct seasonal pattern, which clearly suggests that they are weather sensitive. Rainfall, temperature, and other weather variables affect in many ways both the vectors and the pathogens they transmit. For example, high temperatures can increase or reduce survival rate, depending on the vector, its behavior, ecology, and many other factors. Thus, the probability of transmission may or may not be increased by higher temperatures. The tremendous growth in international travel increases the risk of importation of vector-borne diseases, some of which can be transmitted locally under suitable circumstances at the right time of the year. But demographic and sociologic factors also play a critical role in determining disease incidence, and it is unlikely that these diseases will cause major epidemics in the United States if the public health infrastructure is maintained and improved.

Cited by papers we hold 8

• Estimated Effects of Projected Climate Change on the Basic Reproductive Number of the Lyme Disease Vector Ixodes scapularis · 2014
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• Climate and Dengue Transmission: Evidence and Implications · 2013
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• Surveillance of Dengue Fever Virus: A Review of Epidemiological Models and Early Warning Systems · 2012
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• Time series analysis of dengue incidence in Guadeloupe, French West Indies: Forecasting models using climate variables as predictors · 2011
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• Modeling the Effects of Weather and Climate Change on Malaria Transmission · 2009
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• Neglected Infections of Poverty in the United States of America · 2008
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• Dengue Fever Seroprevalence and Risk Factors, Texas–Mexico Border, 2004 · 2007
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• Climate, Deer, Rodents, and Acorns as Determinants of Variation in Lyme-Disease Risk · 2006
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