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LONDON • By 2080, an additional one billion people, including many people from North America and Europe, could be exposed to mosquito-borne viruses, including dengue and Zika if the climate continues to warm at current rates, researchers said.
Preventing this expansion of life-threatening diseases will require not only health officials to be vigilant, but also quick steps to tackle climate change and limit global warming.
The spread of mosquito-borne viruses can "result in lost productivity at work, things like that," said Dr. Sadie Ryan, lead author of the study, published Thursday in the journal PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases. "Essentially, they will cause economic decline in the regions where they take off," she added.
The badysis allowed to follow the expected evolution of two of the most prevalent disease-carrying mosquitoes, Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus, by examining the predicted temperatures to gauge the risks up to 2050 and 2080.
Mosquitoes can carry viruses, including dengue, chikungunya and zika, which can in some cases be fatal or have other debilitating consequences.
These include haemorrhagic fever with repeated exposure to dengue and conbad microcephaly in some cases of exposure to Zika, said Dr. Ryan, a professor of medical geography at the University of Florida.
Dr. Colin Carlson, another lead author of the badysis, said vaccinations did not yet exist for Zika or chikungunya and that there were only a few of them. at the testing stage for dengue.
"The first line of defense against these diseases has never been vaccination," said the postdoctoral fellow of the Department of Biology at Georgetown University.
"Overall, it is much easier for us to prevent mosquitoes or viruses from manifesting themselves somewhere than to prevent an epidemic once it has already begun," he said. -he adds.
People at risk can help reduce the threat through measures such as the use of insect aerosol, window screens and the removal of excess water and waste from the home. Dr. Carlson.
But the most effective way to limit the spread of disease is to fight climate change and further develop global programs to detect and limit the spread of mosquitoes, he added.
"If the climate does not change, it will limit much of the place where these mosquitoes can go," said Dr. Carlson.
Dr. Ryan said that to project the number of people at risk, scientists have combined a temperature-sensitive transmission model with different emission scenarios based on climate change predictions.
The resulting data was superimposed on population models, and the researchers examined how regional changes could increase susceptibility to viruses, she said.
By combining the data, it has been suggested that mosquitoes could overgrow or weaken – and how many people would be at risk in the future, the researchers said.
"What this essentially gives us is the ability to say where can we expect these things to manifest, to establish, to invade and perhaps even to have epidemics occur," said Dr. Ryan.
"This gives us somehow an interesting management tool:" Here is where we are going to witness this increase in potential risk. So let's start watching, consider managing things there. "
Dr. Carlson said that virtually all scenarios predicted increased risk in North America, Europe, and East Asia. "A few degrees of warming will help mosquitoes start spreading dengue fever in these places," he said.
He added that in areas where many people live, mainly densely populated urban centers, many people may be exposed to these viruses for the first time in their lives – a particular concern.
"People who have never faced these diseases previously have not developed immunity," he said. "And so we are very worried that they will have much bigger outbreaks when these pathogens manifest themselves for the first time."
Dr. Ryan said that in the worst emissions scenario, where the Earth would heat up to 8.5 ° C by the end of the twentieth century, more and more people would be infected with mosquito-borne viruses.
The results of the badysis, she said, end up showing the importance of reducing carbon emissions, thanks to measures such as the abandonment of fossil fuels, in the best deadlines.
Without this, "it's really one of our biggest threats to global security," she said.
REUTERS
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