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Evaluation study on Ecology and Environment as Drivers of Human Disease and Pandemics
Corresponding Author(s) : R. Darla
International Journal of Allied Medical Sciences and Clinical Research,
Vol. 9 No. 3 (2021): 2021 Volume - 9 Issue - 3
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has once again highlighted the increasing frequency of spillover of infectious disease from wild animals into humans. The SARS coronavirus type 2 (SARS-CoV-2) almost certainly “jumped” into humans from bats, evolved towards efficient human-to-human transmission, and caused a global pandemic. Ecological changes such as deforestation, increasing greenhouse gas emissions, and climate change are important drivers of disease events by increasing human-animal contacts, affecting animal migration, and increasing the range of disease vectors. With increasing surface temperatures, the emergence of completely novel pathogens, including viruses, has become a graver risk. Mitigation of disease risk would require paying attention to our ecology and environment.
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1. Zoonoses are diseases or infections that are naturally transmissible from vertebrate animals to humans.
2. The average Ebola case fatality rate is around 50%. Case fatality rates have varied from 25% to 90% in past outbreaks. Source: World Health Organization
3. The taxonomic rank between family and species
4. A scientific collaboration between 35 leading academic centres and UN agencies across the world.
5. Frozen soil found mostly in the Northern Hemisphere, where it covers about 25% of exposed land. It is considered to be thousands of years old.
6. “Giant” viruses have sizes (0.6–1.5 µmeter) and genome length (0.6–2.8 Megabase), while most commonly known viruses have much smaller sizes (0.02–0.4 µmeter) and genome length (0.002–0.3 Megabase); 1 µmeter = 1 millionth of a meter; 1 Megabase = 1 million bases.
7. Joshua Lederberg. Speech before the Irvington Institute for Medical Research, Bankers Trust Company, New York, February 8, 1994.
8. Yinon M. Bar-On, Rob Phillips, and Ron Milo, “The biomass distribution on Earth,” Proc Natl Acad Sci (USA) 115, 2018: 6506-11. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1711842115.
9. “Subcommission on Quaternary Startigraphy”, Working Group on the Anthropocene, Accessed July 6, 2020,
10. “Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services”, Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, Accessed July 6, 2020.
11. Ibid
12. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, USA Accessed July 6, 2020.
13. Kate E. Jones, Nikkita G. Patel, Marc A. Levy, Adam Storeygard, Deborah Balk, John L. Gittleman and Peter Daszak, “Global trends in emerging infectious diseases,” Nature 451, 2008: 990-3. doi:10.1038/nature06536
14. Mark Woolhouse, Fiona Scott, Zoe Hudson, Richard Howey, and Margo Chase-Topping, “Human viruses: discovery and emergence,” Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 367, 2012: 2864-71. doi:10.1098/rstb.2011.0354
15. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, USA, Accessed 24 July, 2020.
16. David Arnold, “Death and the Modern Empire: the 1918-19 Influenza Epidemic in India,” Trans RHS. 29, 2019: 181-200.
17. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, USA, Accessed 24 July, 2020.
18. United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, Accessed 24 July, 2020.
19. Worldometer, Accessed July 24, 2020.
20. World Health Organization, Accessed July 6, 2020.
21. Christine K. Johnson, Peta L. Hitchens, Pranav S. Pandit, Julie Rushmore, Tierra Smiley Evans, Cristin CW Young and Megan M Doyle, “Global shifts in mammalian population trends reveal key predictors of virus spillover risk”, Proc R Soc B. 287, 2020:20192736.
22. Gretta T. Pecl, Miguel B. Araujo, Johann D. Bell, et al, “Biodiversity redistribution under climate change: Impacts on ecosystems and human well-being,” Science 355, 2017: eaai9214. doi:10.1126/science.aai9214.
23. Udayan Joseph, Su, Yvonne C. F., Dhanasekharan Vijaykrishna, and Gavin J. D. Smith, “The ecology and adaptive evolution of influenza A interspecies transmission,” Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses 11, 2017: 74–84. doi: 10.1111/irv.12412
24. Ina Smith, and Lin-Fa Wang, “Bats and their virome: an important source of emerging viruses capable of infecting humans,” Curr Opin Virol. 3, 2013: 84-91.
25. Cara E. Brook, and Andrew P. Dobson, “Bats as ‘special’ reservoirs for emerging zoonotic pathogens,” Trends Microbiol. 23, 2015: 172-80. doi:10.1016/j.tim.2014.12.004
26. Kevin J. Olival, Jonathan H. Epstein, Lin-Fa Wang, and Hume E. Field, “Are bats unique viral reservoirs?” in New Directions in Conservation Medicine: applied Cases of Ecological Health, eds. Alonso A. Aguirre, Richard Ostfeld, and Peter Daszak (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 195–212.
27. Mohana Basu, “Bat coronavirus found in two Indian species of bats for the first time: ICMR study”, The Print, April 15, 2020.
28. Mandeep S. Chadha, James, A. Comer, Lewis Lowe, et al, “Nipah virus-associated encephalitis outbreak, Siliguri, India,” Emerg Infect Dis. 12, 2006: 235-40. doi:10.3201/eid1202.051247
29. Sarah Weatherman, Heinz Feldmann, and Emmie de Wit, “Transmission of henipaviruses,” Curr Opin Virol. 28, 2017: 7-11. doi: 10.1016/j.coviro.2017.09.004
30. Hui Ju Han, Hong Lin Wen, Chuan Min Zhou, Fang-Fang Chen, Li-Mei Luo, Jian-wei Liu, and Xue-Jie Yu, “Bats as reservoirs of severe emerging infectious diseases, Virus Res. 205, 2015: 1-6. doi:10.1016/j.virusres.2015.05.006
31. See Endnote 17
32. Gerardo Martin, Carlos Yanez-Arenas, Carla Chen, raina K. Plowright, Rebecca J. Webb, and Lee F. Skerratt, “Climate Change Could Increase the Geographic Extent of Hendra Virus Spillover Risk,” EcoHealth 15, 2018: 509-25. doi: 10.1007/s10393-018-1322-9
33. David W. Redding, Peter M. Atkinson, Andrew A. Cunningham, Gianni Lo Iacono, Lina M. Moses, James L. N. Wood and Kate E. Jones, “Impacts of environmental and socio-economic factors on emergence and epidemic potential of Ebola in Africa”, Nat Commun. 10, 2019: 4531.
34. Jing Liu-Helmersson, Mikkel Quam, Annelies Wilder-Smith, Hans Stenlund, Kristie Ebi, Eduardo Massad, Joacim Rocklöv, “Climate Change and Aedes Vectors: 21st Century Projections for Dengue Transmission in Europe,” EBioMedicine 7, 2016: 267-77.
35. Ibid
36. Erin A. Mordecai, Jeremy M. Cohen, Michelle V. Evans, Catherine A. Lippi, Kerri Miazgowicz, Courtney C. Murdock, Jason R. Rohr, Sadie J. Ryan, Van Savage, Marta S. Shocket, Anna Stewart Ibarra, Matthew B. Thomas, and Daniel P. Weikel, “Detecting the impact of temperature on transmission of Zika, dengue, and chikungunya using mechanistic models”, PLoS Negl Trop Dis. 11, 2017: e0005568.
37. World Economic Forum, Accessed on July 6, 2020.
38. Ibid
39. Sadie J. Ryan, Colin J. Carlson, Erin A. Mordecai, and Leah R Johnson, “Global expansion and redistribution of Aedes-borne virus transmission risk with climate change”, PLoS Negl Trop Dis. 13, 2019: e0007213.
40. Ibid
41. The Lancet Countdown 2019 Report. Accessed on July 6, 2020.
42. Ibid
43. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2019 Report. Accessed on July 6, 2020.
44. Zhi-Ping Zhong, Natalie E. Solonenko, Yueh-Fen Li, Maria C. Gazitúa, Simon Roux, Mary E. Davis, James L. Van Etten, Ellen Mosley-Thompson, Virginia I. Rich, Matthew B. Sullivan, and Lonnie G. Thompson, “Glacier ice archives fifteen-thousand-year-old viruses,” bioRxiv 2020.01.03.894675.
45. Matthieu Legendre, Julia Bartoli, Lyubov Shmakova, Sandra Jeudy, Karine Labadie, Annie Adrait, Magali Lescot, Olivier Poirot, Lionel Bertaux, Christophe Bruley, Yohann Couté, Elizaveta Rivkina, Chantal Abergel, and Jean-Michel Claverie, “Thirty-thousand-year-old distant relative of giant icosahedral DNA viruses with a pandoravirus morphology”, Proc Natl Acad Sci (USA) 11, 2014: 4274-79.
46. Matthieu Legendre, Audrey Lartigue, Lionel Bertaux, Sandra Jeudy, Julia Bartoli, Magali Lescot, Jean-Marie Alempic, Claire Ramus, Christophe Bruley, Karine Labadie, Lyubov Shmakova, Elizaveta Rivkina, Yohann Couté, Chantal Abergel, and Jean-Michel Claverie, “In-depth study of Mollivirus sibericum, a new 30,000-y-old giant virus infecting Acanthamoeba,” Proc Natl Acad Sci (USA) 112, 2015: E5327-35.
47. Melody Schreiber, “The next pandemic could be hiding in the Arctic permafrost”. Accessed on July 6, 2020.
References
2. The average Ebola case fatality rate is around 50%. Case fatality rates have varied from 25% to 90% in past outbreaks. Source: World Health Organization
3. The taxonomic rank between family and species
4. A scientific collaboration between 35 leading academic centres and UN agencies across the world.
5. Frozen soil found mostly in the Northern Hemisphere, where it covers about 25% of exposed land. It is considered to be thousands of years old.
6. “Giant” viruses have sizes (0.6–1.5 µmeter) and genome length (0.6–2.8 Megabase), while most commonly known viruses have much smaller sizes (0.02–0.4 µmeter) and genome length (0.002–0.3 Megabase); 1 µmeter = 1 millionth of a meter; 1 Megabase = 1 million bases.
7. Joshua Lederberg. Speech before the Irvington Institute for Medical Research, Bankers Trust Company, New York, February 8, 1994.
8. Yinon M. Bar-On, Rob Phillips, and Ron Milo, “The biomass distribution on Earth,” Proc Natl Acad Sci (USA) 115, 2018: 6506-11. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1711842115.
9. “Subcommission on Quaternary Startigraphy”, Working Group on the Anthropocene, Accessed July 6, 2020,
10. “Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services”, Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, Accessed July 6, 2020.
11. Ibid
12. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, USA Accessed July 6, 2020.
13. Kate E. Jones, Nikkita G. Patel, Marc A. Levy, Adam Storeygard, Deborah Balk, John L. Gittleman and Peter Daszak, “Global trends in emerging infectious diseases,” Nature 451, 2008: 990-3. doi:10.1038/nature06536
14. Mark Woolhouse, Fiona Scott, Zoe Hudson, Richard Howey, and Margo Chase-Topping, “Human viruses: discovery and emergence,” Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 367, 2012: 2864-71. doi:10.1098/rstb.2011.0354
15. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, USA, Accessed 24 July, 2020.
16. David Arnold, “Death and the Modern Empire: the 1918-19 Influenza Epidemic in India,” Trans RHS. 29, 2019: 181-200.
17. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, USA, Accessed 24 July, 2020.
18. United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, Accessed 24 July, 2020.
19. Worldometer, Accessed July 24, 2020.
20. World Health Organization, Accessed July 6, 2020.
21. Christine K. Johnson, Peta L. Hitchens, Pranav S. Pandit, Julie Rushmore, Tierra Smiley Evans, Cristin CW Young and Megan M Doyle, “Global shifts in mammalian population trends reveal key predictors of virus spillover risk”, Proc R Soc B. 287, 2020:20192736.
22. Gretta T. Pecl, Miguel B. Araujo, Johann D. Bell, et al, “Biodiversity redistribution under climate change: Impacts on ecosystems and human well-being,” Science 355, 2017: eaai9214. doi:10.1126/science.aai9214.
23. Udayan Joseph, Su, Yvonne C. F., Dhanasekharan Vijaykrishna, and Gavin J. D. Smith, “The ecology and adaptive evolution of influenza A interspecies transmission,” Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses 11, 2017: 74–84. doi: 10.1111/irv.12412
24. Ina Smith, and Lin-Fa Wang, “Bats and their virome: an important source of emerging viruses capable of infecting humans,” Curr Opin Virol. 3, 2013: 84-91.
25. Cara E. Brook, and Andrew P. Dobson, “Bats as ‘special’ reservoirs for emerging zoonotic pathogens,” Trends Microbiol. 23, 2015: 172-80. doi:10.1016/j.tim.2014.12.004
26. Kevin J. Olival, Jonathan H. Epstein, Lin-Fa Wang, and Hume E. Field, “Are bats unique viral reservoirs?” in New Directions in Conservation Medicine: applied Cases of Ecological Health, eds. Alonso A. Aguirre, Richard Ostfeld, and Peter Daszak (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 195–212.
27. Mohana Basu, “Bat coronavirus found in two Indian species of bats for the first time: ICMR study”, The Print, April 15, 2020.
28. Mandeep S. Chadha, James, A. Comer, Lewis Lowe, et al, “Nipah virus-associated encephalitis outbreak, Siliguri, India,” Emerg Infect Dis. 12, 2006: 235-40. doi:10.3201/eid1202.051247
29. Sarah Weatherman, Heinz Feldmann, and Emmie de Wit, “Transmission of henipaviruses,” Curr Opin Virol. 28, 2017: 7-11. doi: 10.1016/j.coviro.2017.09.004
30. Hui Ju Han, Hong Lin Wen, Chuan Min Zhou, Fang-Fang Chen, Li-Mei Luo, Jian-wei Liu, and Xue-Jie Yu, “Bats as reservoirs of severe emerging infectious diseases, Virus Res. 205, 2015: 1-6. doi:10.1016/j.virusres.2015.05.006
31. See Endnote 17
32. Gerardo Martin, Carlos Yanez-Arenas, Carla Chen, raina K. Plowright, Rebecca J. Webb, and Lee F. Skerratt, “Climate Change Could Increase the Geographic Extent of Hendra Virus Spillover Risk,” EcoHealth 15, 2018: 509-25. doi: 10.1007/s10393-018-1322-9
33. David W. Redding, Peter M. Atkinson, Andrew A. Cunningham, Gianni Lo Iacono, Lina M. Moses, James L. N. Wood and Kate E. Jones, “Impacts of environmental and socio-economic factors on emergence and epidemic potential of Ebola in Africa”, Nat Commun. 10, 2019: 4531.
34. Jing Liu-Helmersson, Mikkel Quam, Annelies Wilder-Smith, Hans Stenlund, Kristie Ebi, Eduardo Massad, Joacim Rocklöv, “Climate Change and Aedes Vectors: 21st Century Projections for Dengue Transmission in Europe,” EBioMedicine 7, 2016: 267-77.
35. Ibid
36. Erin A. Mordecai, Jeremy M. Cohen, Michelle V. Evans, Catherine A. Lippi, Kerri Miazgowicz, Courtney C. Murdock, Jason R. Rohr, Sadie J. Ryan, Van Savage, Marta S. Shocket, Anna Stewart Ibarra, Matthew B. Thomas, and Daniel P. Weikel, “Detecting the impact of temperature on transmission of Zika, dengue, and chikungunya using mechanistic models”, PLoS Negl Trop Dis. 11, 2017: e0005568.
37. World Economic Forum, Accessed on July 6, 2020.
38. Ibid
39. Sadie J. Ryan, Colin J. Carlson, Erin A. Mordecai, and Leah R Johnson, “Global expansion and redistribution of Aedes-borne virus transmission risk with climate change”, PLoS Negl Trop Dis. 13, 2019: e0007213.
40. Ibid
41. The Lancet Countdown 2019 Report. Accessed on July 6, 2020.
42. Ibid
43. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2019 Report. Accessed on July 6, 2020.
44. Zhi-Ping Zhong, Natalie E. Solonenko, Yueh-Fen Li, Maria C. Gazitúa, Simon Roux, Mary E. Davis, James L. Van Etten, Ellen Mosley-Thompson, Virginia I. Rich, Matthew B. Sullivan, and Lonnie G. Thompson, “Glacier ice archives fifteen-thousand-year-old viruses,” bioRxiv 2020.01.03.894675.
45. Matthieu Legendre, Julia Bartoli, Lyubov Shmakova, Sandra Jeudy, Karine Labadie, Annie Adrait, Magali Lescot, Olivier Poirot, Lionel Bertaux, Christophe Bruley, Yohann Couté, Elizaveta Rivkina, Chantal Abergel, and Jean-Michel Claverie, “Thirty-thousand-year-old distant relative of giant icosahedral DNA viruses with a pandoravirus morphology”, Proc Natl Acad Sci (USA) 11, 2014: 4274-79.
46. Matthieu Legendre, Audrey Lartigue, Lionel Bertaux, Sandra Jeudy, Julia Bartoli, Magali Lescot, Jean-Marie Alempic, Claire Ramus, Christophe Bruley, Karine Labadie, Lyubov Shmakova, Elizaveta Rivkina, Yohann Couté, Chantal Abergel, and Jean-Michel Claverie, “In-depth study of Mollivirus sibericum, a new 30,000-y-old giant virus infecting Acanthamoeba,” Proc Natl Acad Sci (USA) 112, 2015: E5327-35.
47. Melody Schreiber, “The next pandemic could be hiding in the Arctic permafrost”. Accessed on July 6, 2020.