{"id":1407435,"date":"2023-12-22T09:45:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-22T09:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/grist.org\/?p=625920"},"modified":"2023-12-22T09:45:00","modified_gmt":"2023-12-22T09:45:00","slug":"the-link-between-climate-change-and-a-spate-of-rare-disease-outbreaks-in-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/12\/22\/the-link-between-climate-change-and-a-spate-of-rare-disease-outbreaks-in-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"The link between climate change and a spate of rare disease outbreaks in 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A 16-month-old boy was playing in a splash pad at a country club in Little Rock, Arkansas, this summer when water containing a very rare and deadly brain-eating amoeba went up his nose. He died a few days later<\/a> in the hospital. The toddler wasn\u2019t the first person in the United States to contract the freshwater amoeba, Naegleria fowleri, this year. In February, a man in Florida died<\/a> after rinsing his sinuses with unboiled water \u2014 the first Naegleria fowleri-linked death<\/a> to occur in winter in the U.S. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2023 was also an active year for Vibrio vulnificus, a type of flesh-eating bacteria. There were 11 deaths<\/a> connected to the bacteria in Florida, three deaths<\/a> in North Carolina, and another three deaths<\/a> in New York and Connecticut. Then there was the first-ever locally transmitted case<\/a> of mosquito-borne dengue fever in Southern California in October, followed by another case<\/a> a couple of weeks later. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scientists have warned that climate change would alter the prevalence and spread of disease in the U.S., particularly those caused by pathogens that are sensitive to temperature. This year\u2019s spate of rare illnesses may have come as a surprise to the uninitiated, but researchers who have been following the way climate change influences disease say 2023 represents the continuation of a trend they expect will become more pronounced over time: The geographic distribution of pathogens and the timing of their emergence are undergoing a shift. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Vibrio vulnificus bacteria. \n BSIP\/Universal Images Group via Getty Images<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese are broadly the patterns that we would expect,\u201d said Rachel Baker, assistant professor of epidemiology, environment, and society at Brown University. \u201cThings start moving northward, expand outside the tropics.\u201d The number of outbreaks Americans see each year, said Colin Carlson, a global change biologist studying the relationship between global climate change, biodiversity loss, and emerging infectious diseases at Georgetown University, \u201cis going to continue to increase.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s because climate change can have a profound effect on the factors that drive disease, such as temperature, extreme weather, and even human behavior. A 2021 study<\/a> found water temperature was among the top environmental factors affecting the distribution and abundance of Naegleria fowleri, which thrives in water temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit but can also survive frigid winters by forming cysts in lake or pond sediment. The amoeba infects people when it enters the nasal canal and, from there, the brain. \u201cAs surface water temperatures increase with climate change, it is likely that this amoeba will pose a greater threat to human health,\u201d the study said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vibrio bacteria, which has been called the \u201cmicrobial barometer of climate change,\u201d is affected in a similar way. The ocean has absorbed the vast majority of human-caused warming over the past century and a half, and sea surface temperatures, especially along the nation\u2019s coasts, are beginning to rise precipitously<\/a> as a result. Studies that have mapped Vibrio vulnificus growth show the bacteria stretching northward<\/a> along the eastern coastline of the U.S. in lockstep with rising temperatures. Hotter summers also lead to more people seeking bodies of water to cool off in, which may influence<\/a> the number of human exposures to the bacteria, a study said. People get infected by consuming contaminated shellfish or exposing an open wound \u2014 no matter how small \u2014 to Vibrio-contaminated water. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mosquitoes breed in warm, moist conditions and can spread diseases like dengue when they bite people. Studies show the species of mosquito that carries dengue, which is endemic in many parts of the Global South, is moving north into new territory<\/a> as temperatures climb and flooding becomes more frequent and extreme. A study<\/a> from 2019 warned that much of the southeastern U.S. is likely to become hospitable to dengue by 2050. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
A member of the Florida Keys mosquito control department inspects a neighborhood for any mosquitos or areas where they can breed as the county works to eradicate mosquitos carrying dengue fever.\n Joe Raedle\/Getty Images<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Other warmth-loving pathogens and carriers of pathogens are on the move, too \u2014 some of them affecting thousands of people a year. Valley fever, a fungal disease that can progress into a disfiguring and deadly illness<\/a>, is spreading through a West that is drier and hotter than it used to be. The lone star tick, an aggressive hunter that often leaves the humans it bites with a life-long allergy to red meat, is expanding northward<\/a> as winter temperatures grow milder and longer breeding seasons allow for a larger and more distributed tick population. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The effect that rising temperatures have on these diseases doesn\u2019t necessarily signal that every death linked to a brain-eating amoeba or Vibrio that occurred this year wouldn\u2019t have happened in the absence of climate change \u2014 rare pathogens were claiming lives long before anthropogenic warming began altering the planet\u2019s dynamics. Future analyses may look at the outbreaks that took place in 2023 individually to determine whether rising temperatures or some other climate change-related factor played a role. What is clear is that climate change is creating more opportunities for rare infectious diseases to crop up. Daniel R. Brooks, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Toronto and author of a book on climate change and emerging diseases<\/a>, calls this \u201cpathogen pollution,\u201d or \u201cthe accumulation of a lot of little emergences.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

State and local health departments have few tools at their disposal for predicting anomalous disease outbreaks, and doctors often aren\u2019t familiar with diseases that aren\u2019t endemic to their region. But health institutions can take steps to limit the spread of rare climate-driven pathogens. Medical schools could incorporate climate-sensitive diseases into their curricula so their students know how to recognize these burgeoning threats no matter where in the U.S. they eventually land. A rapid test for Naegleria fowleri in water samples already exists<\/a> and could be used by health departments to test pools and other summer-time hot spots for the amoeba. States could conduct real-time monitoring of beaches for Vibrio bacteria<\/a> via satellite. Cities can monitor the larvae of the mosquito species that spreads dengue and other diseases and spray pesticides to reduce the numbers of adult mosquitoes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf we were looking proactively for pathogens before they caused disease, we could better anticipate local outbreaks,\u201d Brooks said. In other words, he said, we should be \u201cfinding them before they find us.\u201d

<\/span><\/div><\/span><\/p>\n

This story was originally published by Grist<\/a> with the headline The link between climate change and a spate of rare disease outbreaks in 2023<\/a> on Dec 22, 2023.<\/p>\n

This post was originally published on Grist<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The temperature-sensitive pathogens that caught U.S. communities off guard are a grim preview of the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":173,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1244],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1407435"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/173"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1407435"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1407435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1407436,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1407435\/revisions\/1407436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1407435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1407435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1407435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}