hacked by p@3t_b@y for turks

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To cite this article:
Violaine Cotté, Sarah Bonnet, Martine Cote, Muriel Vayssier-Taussat. Vector-Borne and Zoonotic Diseases. -Not available-, ahead of print. doi:10.1089/vbz.2009.0066.

Online Ahead of Print: December 18, 2009 

Abstract

In Europe, Ixodes ricinus ticks are vectors of many emerging pathogens, including Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato (sl), Anaplasma phagocytophilum, spotted fever group Rickettsia sp., Babesia sp., and very likely Bartonella sp. In this study, we looked for the presence of DNA of these microorganisms in 572 ticks from two forests in the west of France. DNA extraction and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification were performed on individual nymphal, male, and female I. ricinus ticks. Amplification from 1 tick among the 572 samples (0.2%) resulted in PCR products with Bartonella-specific primers. Sequence analysis of the amplified fragment did not lead to species identification. Two ticks (0.3%) carried A. phagocytophilum–specific DNA. Eight ticks (1.4%) were positive with spotted fever group Rickettsia–specific primers, and all PCR fragments were related to Rickettsia helvetica. Thirty-five ticks (6.1%) were positive with B. burgdorferi sl–specific primers; the sequences were all related to Borrelia garinii or Borrelia afzelii, except one that was related to Borrelia carolinensis, a newly described species never reported in Europe so far. Thirty-five ticks (6.1%) carried Babesia sp. DNA. Female adults were more infected by B. burgdorferi sl than male adults. The prevalence of B. burgdorferi sl and Babesia sp. was significantly different between the two forests, with a higher prevalence of B. burgdorferi sl in ticks from the forest of Princé and a higher prevalence of Babesia sp. in ticks from the forest of Gâvre. To our knowledge, this is the first study that has detected all five pathogens in questing I. ricinus in the west of France and the first report of B. carolinensis DNA in ticks in Europe.

http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/vbz.2009.0066

Anne M. Kiilerich , Henrik Christensen  and Stig M. Thamsborg

Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica 2009, 51:55doi:10.1186/1751-0147-51-55
Published: 21 December 2009

Abstract (provisional)

Background
The presence of Anaplasma phagocytophilum, an Ixodes ricinus transmitted bacterium, was investigated in two flocks of Danish grazing lambs. Direct PCR detection was performed on DNA extracted from blood and serum with subsequent confirmation by DNA sequencing.

Methods
31 samples obtained from clinically normal lambs in 2000 from Fussingo, Jutland and 12 samples from ten lambs and two ewes from a clinical outbreak at Feddet, Zealand in 2006 were included in the study. Some of the animals from Feddet had shown clinical signs of polyarthritis and general unthriftiness prior to sampling. DNA extraction was optimized from blood and serum and detection achieved by a 16S rRNA targeted PCR with verification of the product by DNA sequencing.

Results
Five DNA extracts were found positive by PCR, including two samples from 2000 and three from 2006. For both series of samples the product was verified as A. phagocytophilum by DNA sequencing.

Conclusions
A. phagocytophilum was detected by molecular methods for the first time in Danish grazing lambs during the two seasons investigated (2000 and 2006).

http://www.actavetscand.com/content/51/1/55

By Jochen Bölsche - 12/17/2009
 
For Germans gobal warming is no longer just about stranded polar bears and dying coral reefs. These days, millions of people are feeling the heat of climate change at home. The effects are becoming more drastic and rapid.

A German Armed Forces special unit wearing snowy white protective suits complete with hoods and respiratory masks hacks its way through the Bavarian undergrowth. The ghostly figures are here to carry out a reconnaissance mission. Their enemy has eight legs and a dangerous weapon.

The men are from the Armed Forces Institute of Microbiology in Munich. Originally, the organization was founded to defend against exotic epidemics and biological terrorist attacks, but its members also regularly head out to hunt for domestic ticks. The bloodsucking parasites, carriers of dangerous illnesses such as tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) and Lyme disease, pose a danger to the suited soldiers. Meanwhile, the rest of the population are at risk, too. Around 327,000 Germans contract Lyme disease from tick saliva each year. According to Germany’s Federal Environment Agency (UBA), treatment for the disease “is often protracted and doesn’t necessarily have good prospects of success.”

And the menace is growing. Lieutenant Colonel Dr. Gerhard Dobler said his unit collected 350 ticks in the space of two hours this year, twice as many as they found at the same time last year. Their analysis also showed that a disproportionate number of the bloodthirsty arachnids are carrying viruses as compared to last year.

Climate Change Probably to Blame

Ixodes ricinus, commonly known as the castor-bean tick or sheep tick, is on the move, and not just in Bavaria. The danger of contracting TBE in Germany, which in the most extreme cases can cause fatal meningitis, was once limited to the south of the country and to regions below 800 meters (2,600 feet) in elevation. But, for a long time, the risk zone has been spreading. Now it includes places in the north as well as to elevations up to 1,500 meters (4,900 feet).

Tanja Gönner, environment minister for the southern German city of Stuttgart, warns that the risk of TBE infection from tick bites has risen tenfold in the last 10 years. The National Reference Laboratory for Tick-Borne Diseases in Jena reports there are “clear indications” that climate change is to blame for the increase. Global warming creates the warm, humid winters which help ticks flourish.

This upsurge in tick activity has been one of a string of dismal news reports within Germany in the weeks and months leading up to the climate conference in Copenhagen. The message is clear — global warming affects not just polar bears and coral reefs, but us as well. Although the earth’s average temperatures seem to have halted their climb over the last few years, scientists pin that development on other factors, such as fluctuating solar activity and altered deep water currents in the Pacific Ocean. Europe remains among the regions where temperatures are rising.

Flooding Afoot?

Never before have there been so many reports of shrinking waterways and North Sea dikes under threat, of vulnerable harvests and unfamiliar pests. The changes show the extent of the impact of Germany’s average temperature increase of 0.9 degrees Celsius (1.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over the past century. The newsflow does not bode well for the further increase of 1.5 to 3.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 to 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit) predicted to occur by 2100.

Impressive television images have contributed to the shift in public awareness of the problem. There was German Chancellor Angela Merkel, for one, posing in front of Greenland’s melting glaciers in a bright red anorak back in 2008. And the cabinet of the Maldives, a small island nation in danger of disappearing entirely beneath rising sea levels, created a spectacular scene when its government donned diving suits and held an underwater cabinet session this October, a hard-hitting appeal to reduce global emissions.

For most Germans, however, it’s more likely to be the domestic risks that hit home. The country’s own North Sea coast is at greater risk of flooding due to the expansion of warm water masses, the accelerated melting of the polar ice caps, and more frequent storms from the northwest, which push sea water ever further into the funnel-shaped German Bight.

‘Like a German Maldives’

Three years ago, politicians refused requests to increase the height of all coastal dikes, basing their decision on the need to economize and the “uncertain data basis,” in the words of the Coastal Research Station in the state of Lower Saxony. The opposition center-left Social Democratic Party mocked the decision at the time, saying that the state’s center-right coalition of the Christian Democratic Union and Free Democratic Party apparently believed climate change took place “only in China and India.”

Since then, however, the view has spread that the North Sea coast especially, with its low-lying coastal islands, represents “something like a German Maldives,” in the words of Zeit Wissen, a German science magazine. The population of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany’s northernmost state, includes 350,000 lowland inhabitants who will be threatened in the long term by rising sea levels. The state sees itself facing the choice of “raising the dikes or, in extreme cases, letting one or another of the lowlands behind the dikes fill with water,” says climate researcher Hans von Storch from the small northern city of Geesthacht.

Schleswig-Holstein, which borders on water to both the east and the west, has now resolved to add 50 centimeters (20 inches) to its North Sea dikes and 30 centimeters (12 inches) to those on its Baltic Sea coast as a climate change precaution.
Part 2: Record Temperatures
In addition, with the latest research predicting a rise of up to 1.4 meters (4.6 feet) by 2100 due to the rapidly increasing polar ice melt, Schleswig-Holstein’s Environment Ministry plans to double the width at the top of all its North Sea coastal dikes to five meters (16 feet), creating a “reserve” in case further heightening is necessary in the future.

Climate change “has arrived in the North and Baltic Seas,” in the words of the German Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency. It wasn’t just seaside swimmers who noticed the change this summer, as they enjoyed the 22nd year in a row of record water temperatures. Even at a depth of 40 meters (130 feet), the water is now 13 degrees Celsius (55 degrees Fahrenheit) on average, two degrees Celsius more than last century’s average.

“The North Sea is becoming the Mediterranean,” the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper declared, summing up the trend. What may be good news for swimmers, spells disaster for fisheries. Just as ocean warming brought plagues of jellyfish to the countries abutting the Mediterranean and caused algae to overwhelm the Caribbean’s colorful coral reefs, changes are underway in the North Sea.

Heat-Sensitive Fish at Risk

The German Bight, which last froze 46 years ago, is now home to flitting swarms of Mediterranean species such as sardines and anchovies. Exotic species like the striped red mullet or the sea bass, a fish prized along France’s Côte d’Azur as the “loup de mer” (”wolf of the sea”), have established themselves as well. And a Dutch fisherman named Anton Dekker has made it his specialty to take his cutter “SL-9-Johanna” squid fishing in the warm southwestern currents.

At the same time, however, fish sensitive to warmth such as the cod and pollack, which are far more important economically, have migrated to cooler waters further away. Around half of all native fish species have left since 1980, according to researchers at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, who track their migrations.

Fishery researcher Christopher Zimmermann in the northeastern German city of Rostock reports that last year’s generation of herring was “the weakest in almost 30 years” — possibly also a consequence of ocean warming. Zimmermann considers the cause of the phenomenon to be that due to climate change, the young herrings’ food resources — plankton consisting of tiny crabs and algae — are no longer present in the southern part of the North Sea “in the right place at the right time.”

Inland Ships Stranded in Summer

Further inland, fish farmers — as well as swimmers in lakes and ponds — are also seeing the effects of climate change. Berlin’s Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries warns of an “invasion of tropical species,” including exotic blue algae. More and more lakes usually open for public swimming have had to be closed due to the presence of toxic algae, and the water level in many fish ponds is down after a dry summer.

The fish farming industry especially in Germany’s drier eastern regions has felt the consequences this year, including oxygen deficient water, slow-growing fish, and even the necessity to carry out emergency harvesting of stock. “We fish farmers are the hardest hit by climate change,” says Christoph Junghanns from the town of Forst on the German-Polish border.

And operators of many inland shipping lines could say the same. According to the Federal Waterways and Shipping Administration, low water levels this summer meant that “profitable freight shipping was no longer possible” on the Oder River, which forms Germany’s border with Poland. The same was true for the Elbe River, which traverses Germany from the Czech border to the North Sea. “Low water phases are beginning earlier in the season and lasting longer,” Potsdam based climate researcher Frank Wechsung explains. “We expect to see the last of summertime shipping by 2050.”

Yet More Evidence of Global Warming

Farmers and foresters are increasingly running up against problems as well, and they tend to notice earlier than city dwellers do that nature is no longer playing by its own rules. Swifts are now raising a second brood of young in the space of one summer, while many cranes and storks stay in northern Germany all winter instead of continuing on to southern Spain or Africa. Mediterranean birds like the brightly colored bee-eater or the short-toed eagle have also been spotted north of the Alps.

Spring now arrives on average five days earlier than it did 20 years ago, while climate zones have shifted north by up to 100 kilometers (60 miles) in the same time period. These developments prompted one vintner to plant Mediterranean grape varieties such as Cabernet Sauvignon on his land in the Kaiserstuhl wine-producing region of southern Germany, and a German-Turkish couple recently began planting a 4,000-square-meter (43,000-square-foot) olive grove on a slope above the German stretch of the Moselle River.

But it’s not just foreign fruits that are gaining a foothold in Germany — southern plant pests are spreading north as well. A notorious strain of black fruit rot has made it as far as Altes Land, a fruit growing region near Hamburg. “The apples are rotting on the trees,” reports Roland Weber, a biologist and fruit growing expert from the town of Jork in Altes Land.
Part 3: Exotic Species For Germany?
According to UBA, many crops traditionally cultivated in Germany, such as potatoes, rye, and oats, will largely disappear if — as seems “very likely” — the country sees temperatures rise a further 2 to 3 degree Celsius (3.5 to 7 degree Fahrenheit) by 2100 and summertime precipitation and soil fertility drop by 30 percent. The agency also suggests that soybean cultivation could become a possibility in southern Germany.

To prepare the country’s agricultural sector for the “longer summer dry spells” now expected, the Julius Kühn Institute in Braunschweig, which researches cultivated plants, is testing drought resistant exotic species such as Sudan grass and sorghum for their suitability as energy crops.

The country’s foresters are making similarly large-scale adjustments. Researchers in Eberswalde, near Berlin, are using Germany’s first dry lab to test the root system of the common beech for its reaction to periods of drought. The UBA is advocating a massive “forest conversion” and it seems the change is unavoidable — the timber industry’s beloved monoculture spruce stands will have to give way to stable mixed forests capable of withstanding dry summers as well as the devastating winter storms that have been felling shallow-rooted spruces by the thousands since the early 1990s.

Pollen Allergies and Forest Fires

On top of all that, climate change also accelerates forest fire development. Even if Germany’s average temperature rises by just 1.4 degrees Celsius (2.5 degrees Fahrenheit) — providing the country with “Tuscan conditions” — climate researcher Friedrich-Wilhelm Gerstengarbe in Potsdam expects that “the danger of forest fires will rise by almost a third by 2050″ in the coniferous forests around Berlin.

It’s long been clear that the greenhouse effect inflicts both direct and indirect damage on humans — and not only in the Third World, where the aid organization Oxfam estimates by 2015 around 375 million people will suffer consequences such as epidemics, lack of drinking water and floods.

Extended growing seasons and the arrival of nonnative plants have changed the pollen calendar to the detriment of those with allergies. Ragweed, the dreaded warmth-loving plant with “enormous allergenic potential,” is spreading “explosively” throughout Germany, according to Tobias Welte, a professor of medicine in Hanover.

Aggressive Ticks on the Move

In addition, the country is threatened by “climatically dependent stress situations,” in the words of the UBA, incidents along the lines of the heat wave that claimed approximately 40,000 victims throughout Western Europe — 7,000 of them in Germany alone — in summer 2003. The German government calculates that in Freiburg, a southern German city already known for its comparatively mild climate, the number of days with temperatures reaching more than 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) will nearly double and the number of “tropical nights” with temperatures over 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit) will almost triple by 2100.

Climate researchers warn that such heat levels increase the risk of infections, for example through cholera present in water or salmonella in food. Viruses thrive on warmth, as do their carriers, known to scientists as vectors. That includes not just ticks, but a range of animals such as mice, mites, and mosquitoes.

Epidemiologists were alarmed to discover that the Asian tiger mosquito, among others, had already reached Germany on its northward march. The insect was spotted for the first time along the Upper Rhine River. Two years ago, the same species infected 214 people in northern Italy with the Chikungunya virus, a tropical fever whose symptoms include severe joint pain. The UBA also warns that there is always “a danger of a recurrence of malaria infections.”

Disease Risk

Two other dangerous relatives of the sheep tick have made it to Germany as well. The new arrivals are a Mediterranean variety of Hyalomma tick, which has red and yellow banded legs and can transmit a serious hemorrhagic fever, and the marsh tick, with its speckled pattern, which has now reached Lübeck in far northern Germany after years of migration from Italy and Austria.

This second bloodsucker measures up to two centimeters (0.8 inches) when fully fed, three times the size of the sheep tick. It carries canine babesiosis, a disease that can be fatal under some circumstances and infects dogs, among other animals. The tick can also pose a danger to humans as a carrier of typhus and other diseases.

This new arrival from the south differs from the more lethargic sheep tick in its pronouncedly aggressive behavior. The Robert-Koch-Institut, Germany’s federal institute for disease control and prevention, cites foresters in the state of Brandenburg who observed the marsh tick “actively moving toward them within a radius of one meter (3.3 feet) in order to bite.”

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,667608,00.html

By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS
Published: December 16, 2009

Defensible anger becomes indefensible incoherence in “Under the Eightball,” a heartfelt documentary that twists an emotional journey into an anti-establishment tirade.
Written and directed by Timothy Grey and Breanne Russell, the film chronicles their 18-month investigation into the diagnosis and treatment of Mr. Grey’s younger sister, Lori Hall-Steele, who died of Lyme disease in Michigan in 2008. As the filmmakers track the history and politics of the disease, test for environmental causes and watch over the patient’s decline, the first half of the film envelops us in a tender, visually compelling cocoon.

Then things fall apart, so fast and so furiously that it’s impossible to know where verifiable science leaves off, and conspiracy theory begins. Propelled by rage and a string of interviews — with doctors, scientists, authors — the film lurches from Project Paperclip (which welcomed German scientists, including bio-warfare specialists, to the United States after World War II) to the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, from contaminated wells to Japanese germ-warfare experiments.

Taking aim against multiple villains — including Dow Chemical and the health and pharmaceutical industries — and appearing to parallel Ms. Steele’s lack of appropriate treatment with the government’s notorious Tuskegee experiments with black men and syphilis, the directors skid off the rails so extravagantly that there is no going back.

Unfolding like two very different films, “Under the Eightball” undergoes a midpoint conversion from fascinating bug hunt to nightmarish lecture. In the end, critical questions may remain unanswered, but Mr. Grey’s grief and frustration are incontestable.

UNDER THE EIGHTBALL

Opens on Wednesday in Manhattan.

Written, directed and edited by Timothy Grey and Breanne Russell; directors of photography, Mr. Grey and D C Hayden; music by Mr. Grey and Gabe Clark; produced by Justin Blake; released by Andalusian Dogs. At the IFC Center, 323 Avenue of the Americas, at Third Street, Greenwich Village. Running time: 2 hours. This film is not rated.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/16/movies/16eight.html?_r=1

By NATALIE SHEPHERD
nshepherd@wfla.com

Published: December 15, 2009

Six students at Pine View Elementary School in Land O’ Lakes were bitten by ticks this month, according to the Pasco County School District. Assistant Superintendent David Scanga thought they might have picked up the ticks on the playground, so after the school discovered the problem, the campus was sprayed to get rid of the ticks.

“Once we knew of the problem, treatment happened very quickly, and since that time there hasn’t been a single case,” Scanga said.

The school contacted the parents of the students who were bitten, telling them about the situation.

“These are individual cases and we called all the parents, informed them, made sure they had some guidance as to what they should do,” he said.

But some parents don’t feel the district did enough to protect students. The school did not send home a letter telling other parents to check their kids for ticks.

Principal Cortney Gantt sent an e-mail to staff encouraging them not to discuss the ticks with parents, writing, “Please refrain from talking about this in front of parents, as they are now in a panic and think this is an ongoing problem.”

Keli Higgins has a second-grader at Pine View. She was shocked when she heard about the ticks.

“That’s scary, that’s terrible,” she said. “We’re a little shocked. Now, when my son gets home, I’m going to check and see if he’s got ticks.”

Higgins said she’s used to bugs and wildlife near her Pasco County home, but worries about the threat of Lyme disease, which can be carried by ticks.

“If we’d have gotten a letter, we would have checked him out. And I would have called the school to at least ask some questions, like, I would have asked anything. I would have just wanted to know what’s going on,” Higgins said.

When Higgins heard about the tick problem, she said her No. 1 concern was Lyme disease.

According to the University of Florida, there is a low risk of Lyme disease infection in Florida. There have been 30-50 cases diagnosed per year, but half of those are thought to have been contracted outside the state. Lyme disease is more prevalent in the Northeast; New York, for example, has as many as 5,000 cases each year.

Symptoms included a red, bulls-eye mark where the bite occurred, as well as other flu-like symptoms, which show up within three days to three weeks of the bite.

The school district stands by the principal’s decision not to send a letter home with students. Scanga said the district decided to deal with parents on a case-by-case basis.

“In this particular situation, it wasn’t large numbers, it was very small numbers and they were dealt with as individual incidences,” he said.

Scanga compared the tick infestation to any other biting or stinging bugs that may turn up on the playground.

“We have on our school campuses where you get wasps or you get red ants or you get ticks,” he said. “And when that happens you try to isolate the area and you do a treatment to eradicate them.”

Scanga said there haven’t been any more ticks on campus since they sprayed for the bugs.

Higgins, however, said the school should have notified parents, just to be safe.

“They seem to send a letter home for everything, anything else,” she said. “But to not send a letter home for that, that’s wrong.”

http://www2.tbo.com/content/2009/dec/15/parents-angered-they-werent-told-about-ticks-schoo/

The Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene
Volume 104, Issue 1, Pages 10-15 (January 2010)

Munir Aktasa, Zati Vatanseverb, Kursat Altaya, M. Fatih Aydina, Nazir Dumanlia

Received 17 February 2009; received in revised form 21 July 2009; accepted 21 July 2009.
Summary
This study investigated the presence of the pathogen Anaplasma phagocytophilum in ixodid ticks removed from humans living in three provinces (Giresun, Trabzon, Rize) in the east of the Black Sea Region of Turkey. A total of 1097 ixodid ticks were examined for the presence of A. phagocytophilum DNA. From the 95 pooled tick samples tested, species-specific fragments of A. phagocytophilum (11/95 samples, 11.6%) were amplified by nested PCR. Adult Ixodes ricinus (9/53 samples, 17.0%) and Ixodes spp. nymphs (2/9 samples, 22.2%) were infected with A. phagocytophilum. None of the remaining tick species gave a positive result for the presence of the pathogen. All nested PCR-positive samples were directly sequenced. The partial sequences (457bp) of the amplicons obtained from the infected tick pools were 100% identical to one another and to previously isolated sequences from human patients. To obtain a longer 16S rRNA gene sequence, one representative sample was reamplified with the universal primer set. The longer representative sequence (1306bp) also shared 99.92% similarity (a single adenine deletion) with the recently reported complete sequence of A. phagocytophilum.

http://journals.elsevierhealth.com/periodicals/trstmh/article/S0035-9203(09)00261-2/abstract

Species down, disease up - Study shows biodiversity loss drives human infections

The extinction of plant and animal species can be likened to emptying a museum of its collection, or dumping a cabinet full of potential medicines into the trash, or replacing every local cuisine with McDonald’s burgers.

But the decline of species and their habitats may not just make the world boring. New research now suggests it may also put you at greater risk for catching some nasty disease.

“Habitat destruction and biodiversity loss,”—driven by the replacement of local species by exotic ones, deforestation, global transportation, encroaching cities, and other environmental changes—”can increase the incidence and distribution of infectious diseases in humans,” write University of Vermont biologist Joe Roman, EPA scientist Montira Pongsiri, and seven co-authors in BioScience.

Their study, “Biodiversity Loss Affects Global Disease Ecology,” will appear in the December issue of the journal, available on-line on December 7, 2009.

Diseases Go Global

“Lots of new diseases are emerging, and diseases that were once local are now global,” says Roman, a wildlife expert and fellow at UVM’s Gund Institute for Ecological Economics. “Diseases like West Nile Virus have spread around the world very quickly.”

This is not the first time humans have faced a raft of new diseases. About 10,000 years ago, humans invented farming. This move from hunting to agriculture brought permanent settlements, domestication of animals, and changes in diet. It also brought new infectious diseases, in what scientists call an “epidemiologic transition.”

Another of these transitions came with the Industrial Revolution. Infectious diseases decreased in many places while cancer, allergies and birth defects shot up.

Now, it seems, another epidemiologic transition is upon us. A host of new infectious diseases—like West Nile Virus—have appeared. And infectious diseases thought to be in decline—like malaria—have reasserted themselves and spread.

“Ours is the first article to link the current epidemiological transition,” says Pongsiri, an environmental health expert in EPA’s Office of the Science Advisor, “with biodiversity change, decline and extinction.”

“People have been working on this in individual diseases but no one has put all the studies together to compare them,” says Roman. In 2006, he and Pongsiri gathered a group of scientists and policy analysts with expertise in a range of the new diseases being observed—including West Nile virus as well as malaria, the African parasitic disease schistosomiasis, hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, and several others. From that meeting, the forthcoming BioScience study developed.

“We’ve reviewed all those studies and show that emergence or reemergence of many diseases is related to loss of biodiversity,” says Pongsiri.

“We’ve taken a broad look at this problem to say that it’s not just case-study specific,” she says. “Something is happening at a global scale.”

Of Mosquitoes and Mice

One of the studies that Pongsiri and Roman’s team examined was a 2006 investigation in Amazonian Peru. It was the first to demonstrate that malaria transmission can rise in response to deforestation. Though the mechanisms are complex and not fully worked out, it appears that loss of the structural diversity provided by trees led to higher density of Anopheles darlingi mosquitoes, a potent transmitter of malaria, as well as to higher biting rates.

“Or think about Lyme disease,” says Roman, calling from Connecticut.

People get this disease from ticks infected with a bacterium, Borrelia burgdorferi. The ticks, in turn, usually get the bacterium by feeding on small mammals—particularly white-footed mice.

“Historically, Lyme disease was probably rare, because you had a large range of mammals, everything from pumas all the way down to a widespread community of rodents,” says Roman. Ticks feed on different species, and, since many are poor hosts for the bacterium, only a limited number of ticks would carry the disease to people. But fragmentation and reduction of forests has led to deep declines in the number of mammals—and white-footed mice tend to thrive in species-poor places, like small patches of forest on the edge of neighborhoods.

“In fact, white-footed mice appear to be the most competent animal host reservoir of Lyme disease in the northeastern U.S.,” Pongsiri notes on an EPA blog, “So, the more white-footed mice that are in the forest, the greater chance more ticks will be infected, and the greater chance you have of getting bitten by an infected tick.”

In other words, if you’re worried about catching Lyme disease, it’s a good idea to wear long pants—but it might be a better idea to join your conservation commission or zoning board since “protecting large forested areas in the vicinity of residential areas may reduce the risk of Lyme disease,” the BioScience paper notes.

Eco-epidemiology

It is new to think about biodiversity—and therefore, species and land conservation—as integral to public health. Until recently, almost no epidemiologists, nor medical schools, were framing questions of human infectious disease prevention in terms of, say, habitat structure, promoting genetic diversity in non-human species, or protecting animal predators as ecosystem regulators. Human diseases, goes the conventional thinking, are best understood and treated by looking at humans.

“Now there is the beginning of a movement to bring epidemiology and ecology together,” says Pongsiri.

“We’re not saying that biodiversity loss is the primary driver for all of these emerging diseases,” says Roman, “but it appears to be playing an important role.”

“We’re trying to make the case that all of these environmental changes we’re making, because they are anthropogenic, can be managed, can be controlled,” says Pongsiri. “We may be able to actually reduce or prevent these diseases by managing for biodiversity from the genetic level to the habitat level.”

A third of the bird species on the planet are at risk of extinction and a quarter of the mammals, Roman says, “and we have an incredible amount of habitat being destroyed, along with climate change. We should expect to see the impacts of these changes occurring now, to people—and we do.”

“The standard argument for protecting biodiversity is often that, well, there are medicines out there and you don’t want to destroy a forest where you might have a cure for cancer,” he says, ” and that’s true—but I don’t think that’s as compelling as the argument that if you cut down the forest you or your kids are more prone to infectious diseases.”

Contact: Joshua Brown
joshua.e.brown@uvm.edu
802-656-3039
University of Vermont

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-12/uov-sdd120309.php

To view map: CLICK HERE

Purpose
The aim of this study is to identify the species of Borrelia involved in the dermatologic manifestations of Lyme borreliosis in France. Indeed, in Europe, as opposed to North America, many bacterial species are involved in Lyme borreliosis. Yet, very few is known about the prevalence and distribution of different bacteriological species that account for the disease in France. Thus, this a nation-wide study in which all French dermatologists are invited to participate. Every adult patient presenting with one of the cutaneous manifestation of Lyme borreliosis: erythema migrans, lymphocytoma or acrodermatitis chronica atrophicans can be included in the study.

If the patient agrees participating, after information and written consent, a cutaneous biopsy will be performed in order to isolate Borrelia by means of culture and PCR. An estimated 400 biopsies should be performed within 2 years.

For full details: CLICK HERE