Image by supratimdas054 from Pixabay
Image by supratimdas054 from Pixabay

Pollution and climate change are just some of the ways humans are increasing infectious disease risks

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Peer-reviewed: This work was reviewed and scrutinised by relevant independent experts.

Meta-analysis: This type of study involves using statistics to combine the data from multiple previous studies to give an overall result. The reliability of a meta-analysis depends on both the quality and similarity of the individual studies being grouped together.

Humans are contributing to the rise in emerging infectious diseases, and biodiversity loss, chemical pollution, climate change and introduced species are some of the key factors that may be driving this increase, according to international research. By looking at almost 3,000 observations of the ways infectious diseases are responding to global change they found that the most important human influences driving this increase in disease are biodiversity loss, chemical pollution, climate change and introduced species, while other factors such as deforestation are comparatively unimportant. The authors say the findings should help us to target efforts towards the drivers behind the increased risk, specifically reducing greenhouse gas emissions, managing ecosystem health, and preventing biological invasions and biodiversity loss.

Journal/conference: Nature

Link to research (DOI): 10.1038/s41586-024-07380-6

Organisation/s: University of Notre Dame, USA

Funder: This research was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (DEB-2109293, DEB-2017785, DEB-1518681, IOS-1754868), National Institutes of Health (R01TW010286) and US Department of Agriculture (2021-38420-34065) to J.R.R.; a US Geological Survey Powell grant to J.R.R. and S.L.R.; University of Connecticut Start-up funds to S.A.K.; grants from the National Science Foundation (IOS-1755002) and National Institutes of Health (R01 AI150774) to D.J.C.; and an Ambizione grant (PZ00P3_202027) from the Swiss National Science Foundation to F.W.H.

Media release

From: Springer Nature

Biology: Human-driven global changes influence disease transmission risks

Biodiversity loss, climate change, chemical pollution and introduced species — all as a result of human activity — may be increasing infectious disease transmission. The findings, published in Nature, could help to improve disease management strategies and surveillance efforts towards global change drivers that increase disease.

Humans are known to be contributing to the rise in emerging infectious diseases, which are linked with socio-economic, environmental and ecological factors. Previous research has shown that infectious disease risk is modified by many factors, but the global change drivers that increase disease risk the most, and under what contexts, remain unclear.

Jason Rohr and colleagues examined almost 3,000 existing observations of infectious disease responses to global change drivers across 1,497 host–parasite combinations, including plant, animal and human hosts. Biodiversity loss, chemical pollution, climate change and introduced species were found to be associated with the largest increases in disease transmission. Compared to natural biodiversity gradients, such as latitudinal or elevational gradients in species richness, biodiversity loss was associated with 857% increase in infectious disease outcomes. This represents an associated increase that is 393% greater than chemical pollution, 111% greater than climate change and 65% greater than introduced species. By contrast, urbanization was associated with decreases in disease transmission. The authors suggest this reduction may be due to improved water, sanitation and hygiene for humans, and habitat loss for many parasites (such as bacteria and viruses) and their non-human hosts. These results were found to be consistent across human and non-human diseases.

The findings may help to better target disease management and surveillance efforts towards global change drivers that increase disease. Specifically, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, managing ecosystem health, and preventing biological invasions and biodiversity loss could help reduce the burden of plant, animal and human diseases, especially when coupled with improvements to social and economic determinants of health.

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