hacked by p@3t_b@y for turks

The urban fox can act as a reservoir for insect borne infections such as Typhus and could act as a reservoir for rabies, should it re-enter the UK, that is not amenable to inoculation. Lyme disease is a serious illness transmitted by tick bite. Deer, mice and foxes are known disease reservoirs.

Borrelia bugdorferi
This organism causes Lyme disease, a serious tick borne infection which can be fatal. Incidence in the UK is increasing, mainly outside London at present.

http://www.londonshealth.gov.uk/pdf/biodiv.pdf

Lyme borreliosis is the most common vector-borne disease in the temperate zones of the northern hemisphere, transmitted to human beings by hard ticks of the genus Ixodes. About 85 000 cases are reported annually in the Region, but this is an underestimate. Lyme borreliosis is a multisystem disorder that is treatable with antibiotics and may lead to severe complications of the neurological system, the heart and the joints. TBE is one of the most important and widespread diseases transmitted by ticks in the Region. It is usually transmitted to human beings by the bites of infected ticks. TBE often causes acute disease of the central nervous system, which may result in death. About 40% of infected patients are left with a residual post-encephalitic syndrome.

cCASHh data have shown that, in recent decades, Lyme borreliosis and TBE (from Ixodes ricinus) have spread into higher latitudes (observed in Sweden, owing to milder winters and the early arrival of spring) and altitudes (observed in the Czech Republic, with a shift from 700 m to 1100 m) and have become more frequent in many places. In risk areas, preventive measures, such as TBE vaccination and raising awareness of such protective behaviour as wearing of suitable clothing for outdoor activities and self-inspection afterwards for the early removal of ticks, should be reinforced.

http://www.euro.who.int/Document/Mediacentre/fs1505e.pdf

Ehrlichiosis is no star of science. This emerging disease has an awkward name, vague flu-like symptoms, and a nasty habit of being caused by bacteria that live inside ticks and flatworms. But in the current issue of the journal Public Library of Science Genetics (PLoS Genetics), scientists put ehrlichiosis under the genomic spotlight–and discover some brilliant biology.

Led by scientists at The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) and The Ohio State University (OSU), a team of researchers report the complete genomes of three emerging pathogens that cause ehrlichiosis–Anaplasma phagocytophilum, Ehrlichia chaffeensis, and Neorickettsia sennetsu–and compare the genomes with those of 16 other bacteria with similar lifestyles. The study reports new genes that allow the bacteria to evade a host’s immune system, adapt to new niches, and more. Finally, the report reconstructs the metabolic potential of five representative genomes from these bacteria.

“By comparing so many different pathogens, some closely related and others diverse, we’re able to identify genes linked to different diseases and organisms,” explains molecular biologist Julie Dunning Hotopp of TIGR, first author of the PLoS Genetics paper. Because the pathogens causing ehrlichiosis are obligate intracellular bacteria–able to thrive only inside host cells–they are hard to isolate and study in the lab, Hotopp adds. “How are these diseases different? How are they the same? Can we correlate certain genes with certain characteristics? For the first time, our comparative genomics database offers a resource for tackling these questions.”

Recognized since at least the 1930s, ehrlichiosis sickens not only humans, but also dogs, cattle, sheep, and other animals. In Japan, human ehrlichiosis is commonly called sennetsu fever. In the U.S., most human cases have been linked to ticks.

In the new study, scientists uncovered a clue to how ehrlichiosis-causing bacteria infect such diverse animals. One of the three primary bacteria sequenced, A. phagocytophilum, contains roughly 1,400 genes–including more than 100 variations of a single gene that codes for a protein allowing the bacteria to evade the immune system of the organism it has infected. This protein sits on the bacteria’s outer membrane surface. When the bacteria, through tick bites, transfers to a human, say, or horse, the bacteria chooses the protein variation needed to stay hidden from that particular host.

“These genome sequences have revolutionized the types of experiments [scientists] can perform to understand these diseases,” says microbiologist Yasuko Rikihisa of OSU’s College of Veterinary Medicine. “Already, at least four labs are performing, or planning to perform, whole genome DNA microarray analysis and proteomic analysis of these bacteria.”

In addition to comparing genomes, the current study used those genomes to reconstruct the metabolic potential (the ability to use and produce energy and compounds) of five bacteria, representing the numerous organisms compared. With this final analysis, they gleaned new insight into the broader tactics used by different bacteria. Ehrlichiosis pathogens, for instance, appear capable of making vitamins that a host tick lacks in its regular diet.

“This study is a beautiful example of how in-depth comparative genomics can lead to the identification of molecular features that underlie the lifestyle of pathogens,” says TIGR molecular biologist Hervé Tettelin, senior author of the PLoS Genetics article. “We could not have reached these conclusions by independently studying the genome sequence of each individual pathogen,” he adds. “Now we know how some of the pathogens studied infect or provide benefits to their hosts.”

The scientists hope to build on this work, with potential studies to determine which bacterial genes are turned on during ehrlichiosis infection and to track the evolutionary differences between ehrlichiosis-causing organisms in different parts of the world. Other scientists can build on the new work as well, by accessing the comparative database now online at http://www.tigr.org/sybil/rcd/. This genome sequencing project work was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

###

The Institute for Genomic Research is a not-for-profit center dedicated to deciphering and analyzing genomes. Since 1992, TIGR, based in Rockville, Md., has been a genomics leader, conducting research critical to medicine, agriculture, energy, the environment and biodefense.

http://tinyurl.com/ybr4b2

Hi everyone,

I was wondering if any of you have any info. on anti candida diets. My LLMD has advised that I start following one, but the only web resource that I can find that provides diet sheets is US based. Consequently, many of the foods listed are not readily available in the UK.

I’m also a little worried about supplements -i.e. what to take and how much.

Any input would be very much appreciated!

Health officials are advising people to ape apes after a day in the country. Checking for ticks may prevent the parasite-borne lyme disease, which has been encouraged by milder winters and growing interest in outdoor activities.

Without antibiotics symptoms can develop from a rash to nervous system complications, arthritis or fatigue. Children should be checked round the head and neck but ticks tend to go for warm moist parts of the body in adults, including waistband areas on the back difficult to inspect alone.

Nearly 600 cases of lyme disease were reported in England and Wales last year.

http://tinyurl.com/yrrmkk

Liza Gross

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0040182

Published: May 9, 2006

Copyright: © 2006 Public Library of Science. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Citation: Gross L (2006) A New View on Lyme Disease: Rodents Hold the Key to Annual Risk. PLoS Biol 4(6): e182

Any kid who spent summers playing in the woods knew Mom wouldn’t let you back in the house without a head-to-toe search for ticks, vectors for a wide range of pathogens throughout the world’s temperate regions. In the United States, Rocky Mountain spotted fever was the main concern until 1975, when Lyme disease was found in Connecticut. Since then, incidence has skyrocketed from 497 cases reported in 1982 (the first year national statistics were collected) to a record 23,763 in 2002.

Lyme disease, like other zoonoses, is transmitted by a vector that picks up the pathogen during a blood meal from a vertebrate host. In the eastern and central United States, the spirochete bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi infects blacklegged ticks, Ixodes scapularis, which feed on a wide variety of birds, lizards, and mammals, including mice, deer, and humans. Since human risk is a function of the prevalence of infection among vectors, outbreak prevention depends in part on understanding what controls infection rates among the agents of transmission.

In a new study, Richard Ostfeld, Felicia Keesing, and colleagues examined the ecological determinants of Lyme disease over a 13-year period in southeastern New York, a hot zone for the disease. Combining field data with computer simulations, they analyzed trends in interannual variation and found two powerful predictors of entomological risk of Lyme disease in a given year: abundance of tick hosts white-footed mice and chipmunks, in the previous year and abundance of acorns, which sustain the rodents, two years out. Their findings upset the long-held view that deer and climate are the best indicators of disease risk.

I. scapularis larvae hatch in midsummer, and acquire infection after feeding on an infected mouse or other small animal. Larvae detach after several days of feeding, then molt into nymphs and enter a nearly year-long dormant stage. After another round of feeding, nymphs fall off and molt into adults, which prefer the blood of larger mammals. Larvae and nymphs can acquire and transmit infection, but people are most likely to contract Lyme disease from nymphs.

A person’s risk of exposure to Lyme disease depends on the population density of infected nymphal ticks, which is a product of the total density of nymphs and the nymphal infection prevalence. (Humans can reduce their personal risk by using repellents and routinely checking for ticks when visiting high-risk areas.) Many studies have examined variations in climate and white-tailed deer population dynamics as determinants of tick abundance and disease risk. But few have investigated the impacts of fluctuations in the abundance of hosts for larval ticks, and none have examined all of these variables, temperature, precipitation, deer, mice, chipmunks, and acorns, simultaneously over such a long period.

From 1991 to 2004, the researchers collected temperature and precipitation data, and estimated the abundance of acorns and animals on six plots of land. From this 13-year dataset, they developed computer models to estimate how each of the 11 variables (including multiple climate and deer indexes) contributed to yearly variations in the density of infected ticks and thus risk of human exposure.

While none of the climate variables influenced nymphal infection prevalence, higher temperatures in the previous year and precipitation patterns in the current year had weak, though unexpected, effects on total density and density of infected nymphs. It’s thought that higher temperatures keep tick populations down, but the models showed them increasing both total density and density of infected nymphs. And though tick survival is expected to rise with precipitation, the models found the highest tick numbers at intermediate precipitation levels. These inconsistencies can be explored by incorporating other variables with documented effects into the approach outlined here. Also surprising, the researchers found that even a 3-fold variation in deer numbers had no impact on subsequent nymph abundance.

Density of infected nymphs (the principal determinant of Lyme disease risk) varied significantly from year to year, fueled mostly by large fluctuations in total nymph density, which in turn depended mostly on fluctuations in abundance of acorns, mice, and chipmunks. Interestingly, though chipmunk densities are generally lower than mice, their numbers were the best predictor of total nymph density in the subsequent year, likely reflecting their inferior grooming skills. Overall, the results found that acorns were the best predictor of Lyme disease risk stemming from their crucial role in supporting white-footed mice, chipmunks, and likely other small animals, which in turn provide large reservoirs for B. burgdorferi. Acorns will not be a universal predictor of risk, the researchers acknowledge, since the disease occurs in areas without oaks. But the strength of these findings suggests that the observed link between increased Lyme disease risk and high rodent densities indicates that important food sources, Or predatorsof the rodent hosts of nymphs will be valuable predictors of disease risk.

http://tinyurl.com/2hlrvj

By Annette McIntyre

AS more and more tourists head off to increasingly exotic locations, travellers have become only too aware of the health dangers lurking in some sunnier climes.

And inoculation for a variety of diseases has almost become part of the package when travelling abroad. Sensible travellers make a point of seeking out health advice before heading off to some far flung destinations.

But it’s a fairly safe bet no-one is going to worry too much before setting off to central Europe. Africa and Asia maybe - but Switzerland, Germany and Austria? Surely not.

Yet if you’re not worrying now, you really should be, according to the latest information on the dangers from ticks. Those three countries are among a number of European states in which the potentially fatal Tick Borne Encephalitis is endemic.
continued…

The others on the list include Belarus, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, and the Ukraine. Figures from the Civil Aviation Authority show that more than 26,000 holidaymakers flew from Leeds Bradford airport to TBE endemic countries. And now the Tick Alert campaign has launched Tick Awareness Week, which began on Monday, to make travellers aware of the dangers.

With Central and Eastern Europe fast becoming popular holiday destinations Tick Alert is warning that many travellers are simply unaware of the possible health risks. TBE can lead to meningitis and, in serious cases, result in paralysis and death - with about one in 30 cases proving fatal.

At risk groups include all visitors to rural areas of endemic countries, particularly those taking part in outdoor activities such as trekking, hiking, climbing, cycling and camping.

But Tick Alert says a number of simple measures, such as insect repellent, protective clothing, regularly inspecting for tick bites, and avoiding non-pasteurised milk, can reduce the risk of infection.

The campaign is also highlighting the dangers from home grown ticks which spread Lyme disease in the UK. And they are warning that the dangers of being bitten are growing as global warming increases the number of ticks in the countryside.

The campaign is being supported by the travel health company Masta, which was set up in 1984 at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, but which is now based in Yeadon, where it has just opened a new clinic.

Travel health nurse Michelle Abbott, who is running the clinic along with fellow nurse, Shirley Bannatyne, said many people were simply unaware of the TBE risk.

“Many people if they are going on holiday in Europe don’t seek medical advice because they don’t think they need anything,” she said. “This is really just about increasing awareness.”

She said whereas the countries involved knew they had a problem, many tourists to these areas were simply unaware of the risk.

“In Austria they used to get around 700 cases a year,” she said. “But now it is part of the children’s vaccination programme, so the majority of Austrians are vaccinated against it.”

She said global warming and changes in the climate were leading to changes in area affected by TBE. “Some areas in the South are seeing a reduction, but further North it is expanding,” she said.

The main season is from May to October, and so skiers are not affected, but Michelle said anyone visiting the affected areas during the spring and summer months needed to be aware of the precautions they could take.

She said TBE was potentially life-threatening, and added: “Of the people that get the infection about one third don’t know they have been infected. About two thirds get a flu like illness. And about a third of those go on to get encephalitis.”

In a small percentage of cases - about one to three per cent - the virus will prove fatal. So far the potentially deadly virus is not present in the UK - but ticks in this country cause Lyme disease which can lead to severe lameness and neurological problems if left untreated.

In the affected European areas there are different strains of the virus with some - such as the Siberian - proving more devastating than others.

Michelle said: “There is a vaccination. We wouldn’t recommend it to everybody visiting those countries, but if they are going to be high risk - camping or walking in the countryside - we would certainly want to consider it and talk to them about it.”

In Britain, she said there were generally about 200 cases of Lyme disease a year - but they were generally not life-threatening, and there was no vaccine available here.

She said at a recent conference, top scientists in the field estimated that there were now 10,000 new cases of TBE per year in Europe.

Meanwhile in the UK a charity has been formed to make people aware of the health risk posed by Lyme disease - otherwise known as Borreliosis.

Borreliosis and Associated Diseases Awareness - UK ( BADA-UK) - was formed in November 2004 following what the charity describes as a disappointing lack of Governmental response’ to calls for improved diagnosis and treatment for tick-borne diseases in the UK.

The production of their first information leaflet, on Equine Lyme disease, was commissioned by the British Horse Society and distributed nationally to their riding centres.

The charity says The British Mountaineering Council, the Ramblers Association, the National Trust for Scotland, and the Countryside Management had distributed its leaflets to staff and members.

The charity says: ” As a purely voluntary group, BADA-UK also distributed thousands of leaflets to all manner of group and organisation, from animal sanctuaries to zoological societies. Links to our web site and information leaflets have been included on a wide variety of other web sites from Palin’s Travels to the Student Activities Safety Association, but despite all this, a great number of the general public, and members of the medical profession still remain ignorant of the dangers presented by ticks.”

It adds: “Lyme disease is often referred to as the Great Imitator’, due to the sheer variety of symptoms brought about by a Borrelia infection and its ability to resemble many other conditions. An every increasing number of patients previously diagnosed as suffering from ME/CFS and Fibromyalgia are now discovering that they are infected with one or more bacterial infections, and responding positively to antibiotic treatment and alternative health techniques and regimes.

It stresses: “Having been granted full charity status, we hope to continue our efforts of raising awareness, and promoting defence against this avoidable condition. Those well enough informed in the correct removal of an attached tick can avoid infection if bitten. With prophylactic antibiotic medication, long term and debilitating health conditions can easily be avoided.”
4:40pm Thursday 11th May 2006

www.thisisbradford.co.uk

By Henry J. Fishman, M.D.
ConsumerAffairs.Com

April 7, 2006

Diagnosing, treating and preventing Lyme arthritis — or Lyme Disease — is tougher than ever before.

Lyme arthritis is a tick-borne bacterial disease. Doctors diagnose it by looking for a bull’s-eye rash with a red outside and a clear inside.

According to the Annals of Internal Medicine, however, only about 10 percent of 118 patients had the rash.

With or without the rash, doctors often use an antibody blood test to diagnose the problem. But the antibody test doesn’t pick up the disease early in its course.

Preventing Lyme arthritis is no fun either. There was a vaccine but it was taken off the market a few years ago because it didn’t work very well and led to lawsuits.

So for now, the best way to avoid Lyme arthritis is to avoid grassy, wooded areas. Use an insect repellant and clothe up from head to toe. If you see a tick or suspect Lyme Disease, call your doctor for a blood test and antibiotics as soon as possible.

http://tinyurl.com/2djmvu

San Francisco Chronical

It may sound like witchcraft, but Berkeley scientists have found that ticks who feast on the blood of the common western fence lizard are purged of any Lyme disease bacteria hiding in their gut.

The newly published findings may explain why there is less tick- borne Lyme disease in California than in the eastern United States, where the debilitating illness was first discovered and given its name.

Researchers suspect that a yet- to-be-identified protein in the lizard’s blood destroys the microbes that would otherwise flourish in the tick’s belly and can be later transmitted to human victims.

“We’ve speculated on this for years, and now we have fairly good evidence that this is the case,” said Robert Lane, a University of California at Berkeley insect biologist who has been studying ticks and Lyme disease for more than a decade.

Lane and his colleague Gary Quistad conducted a series of laboratory experiments using young Lyme disease-infected ticks and fence lizards. In the nymphal stage during which they feed on the blood of lizards, the ticks are only about the size of a poppy seed. But it is common to find 30 to 40 at one time sharing the blood of a single fence lizard.

Although infected adult female ticks pose a serious threat of transmitting Lyme disease to humans, the smaller nymphal ticks are the most dangerous because they are harder to find and are still capable of transmitting the disease.

Lane had determined eight years ago that the lizards appeared to be immune to Lyme disease despite infestation with tick nymphs. His latest research, published recently in the Journal of Parasitology, suggest why this happens.

The experiments first ruled out the possibility that antibodies produced by the lizard’s immune system were able to neutralize the Lyme disease bacteria.

Test tube experiments found that Lyme disease bacteria bathed in lizard’s blood died within one hour, while control samples grown in mouse blood lasted three days.

In another experiment, the researchers heated lizard blood to the boiling point, and found that it no longer killed the bacteria in a test tube. The sum of these tests points to what Lane calls a “spirochete-killing factor” that is probably a large protein.

“It’s an extremely important paper,” said Vicky Kramer, chief of the vector-borne disease section of the California Department of Health Services.

Researchers are now trying to determine the precise nature of the Lyme disease-killing protein, and perhaps find out if it can be used to create a treatment for the disease. Lane said he has not yet discussed his findings with biotechnology companies.

California health officials long have been pleasantly puzzled by the fact that Lyme disease is a relative rarity in the state, despite an abundance of ticks. Lane points out that in the eastern regions with higher Lyme disease rates, “they don’t have fence lizards there.”

Berkeley’s Tilden Park served as the field laboratory for Lane, where he previously also uncovered a curious quirk about Lyme disease and the black-legged ticks that carry it there: the infection rates for young ticks, while low, was three to four times higher than the rate in adult ticks. The latest findings again suggest why: When young nymphal ticks feed on the fence lizards, the mysterious protein not only protects the lizard from infection — it actually leaches into the tick’s gut and kills the bacteria there.

Lab tests showed that when infected nymphs fed on the lizards, and then metamorphosed into adult ticks, they were no longer infected.

According to Robert Murray, epidemiologist at the state health department’s Division of Communicable Disease Control, the percentage of infected deer ticks in high Lyme disease areas such as Connecticut is 30 to 60 percent. But the percentage of black-legged ticks — the closely related cousins that carry Lyme disease in California — is only 1 to 2 percent, and only as high as 6 percent in areas such as Mendocino county, where the most Lyme disease cases are found.

In California, only about one in every 200,000 persons is infected with Lyme disease. In Connecticut, where Lyme disease was first discovered in the rural town of Lyme, the rate is 100 times higher.

Lyme disease does occur in California, particularly in coastal zones that provide a moist, forested environment favored by the ticks. In Mendocino County, the rate is about 50 per 200,000, and in Humboldt County, it is 20 per 200,000.

Scientists caution that Lane’s findings do not prove the case that the lizard helps protect western Americans from Lyme disease. “It may be one of many factors,” said Kramer.

LIZARDS, TICKS AND LYME DISEASE
UC Berkeley entomologist Robert Lane has discovered that a subtance found in the blood of the common western fence lizard kills Lyme disease bacteria in the gut of juvenile ticks that feed on it. It may help explain why there is far less Lyme disease in California than in the eastern United States, where the lizard does not live. The western fence lizard — a commonly found species dubbed the blue belly lizard in California - can carry an average of 30 juvenile black legged ticks, which are about the size of a poppy seed. Three stages of tick development Larval Ticks pass through three stages of development. During each stage they eat one “blood meal.” Larval ticks become infected with Lyme disease when they feed on rodents.

Nymphal Tiny tick nymphs can transmit Lyme disease by biting a human. If they feast on a common western lizard, however, something in the reptile’s blood appears to kill the bacteria

Adult Adult black-legged ticks move off the forest floor and onto plants and grasses. Those who feasted on lizards as nymphs are less likely to transmit Lyme disease to humans.

Source: National Institutes of Health and Chronicle Research Lizard photo courtesy of Jack Kelly Clark, tick photo courtesy of Robert S. Lane

http://tinyurl.com/2xlgqk

ABC News

By JOY VICTORY

April 25, 2006 : At first glance, an outbreak of diarrhea among passengers on board a cruise ship in Alaskan waters in the summer of 2004 seemed to be relatively harmless.

Health officials theorized it might be the Norwalk virus, a bug that often affects people living in close quarters, such as in nursing homes, hospitals and cruise ships. While certainly annoying, Norwalk usually doesn’t cause serious illness.

But then the lab reports started trickling in, and it showed that indeed a more serious problem was at hand, many of the afflicted the passengers had eaten raw oysters raised in Alaska that were infected with a type of cholera-like bacteria, Vibrio parahaemolyticus, that normally grows on shellfish harvested in much warmer waters.

The finding not only signaled a dangerous new risk to the Alaskan seafood industry, it also highlighted how surprisingly and directly global warming can affect human health, particularly in terms of infectious diseases, experts say.

“Depending on the warming trend that unfolds in the years ahead, we have to accept that habitats will change … new bugs can be expected to settle in. Every organism will find a niche,” said epidemiology professor Colin Soskolne, of the University of Alberta in Canada. “With the tampering of the environment, we really can’t predict with much certainty exactly what those changes will be.”

Not Safe for Consumption

Global warming is caused by an increase in carbon dioxide and other industrial and auto emissions, which trap heat in the atmosphere and increase air and water temperatures.

While he has personally noticed Alaska’s shrinking glaciers and ice floes, global warming wasn’t on the mind of Dr. Joseph McLaughlin as he investigated the cruise ship disease outbreak.

He simply wanted to know why the oysters were suddenly at risk, before this outbreak, no seafood in Alaska had ever tested positive for Vibrio because the ocean water was simply too cold for the bacteria to multiply.

But that was no longer true: An analysis showed that Alaskan water was no longer as chilly as it once was, giving Vibrio a new home up north.

“There’s a sort of threshold level, above which concentrations of Vibrio in oysters become (accumulated) enough to cause illness in humans,” said McLaughlin, a medical epidemiologist with the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services in Anchorage. “That temperature is about 15 degrees Celsius. What we found was that 2004 was the first summer on record during which the temperature exceeded that.”

Or as McLaughlin said in a report published in the New England Journal of Medicine last October: “Rising temperatures of ocean waters seem to have contributed to one of the largest known outbreaks of V. parahaemolyticus in the United States.”

The warmer water is unlikely to go away. Buoys placed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association in 1976 have detected a steady annual increase of .4 degrees in the Gulf of Alaska, he said.

“We’re not talking about a little bay in Prince William Sound,” McLaughlin said.

Thankfully, the state health department got the word out about the outbreak and advised oyster farm owners to keep oysters deep enough where they would not be exposed to water any warmer than about 15 degrees C.

It is just one of the many ways that Alaskans have had to adapt to documented changes in the climate and environment, McLaughlin said. But it serves as a strong warning signal.

“We thought this was probably the best example of the potential of global warming impacting human health, as far as available evidence goes,” McLaughlin said.

Mosquitoes and Ticks Spreading

Across the world, another microscopic bug, malaria, has caused havoc in the lowlands of Africa. It is transmitted by mosquitoes, which thrive in hot, damp areas near stagnant bodies of water.

Until recently, the mile-high city of Nairobi, Kenya, was relatively free of the disease.

But now Nairobi, despite its elevation and climate, is in the midst of a malaria outbreak.

And like the Alaskan bacterial outbreak, warmer temperatures are to blame, say scientists with the University of Michigan, the University of Hawaii, the University of Barcelona in Spain and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

In their report, published in last month’s Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, they determined that the mosquitoes were thriving in part because it was steadily getting warmer in East Africa’s higher altitudes.

This comes as no to surprise to public health researcher Dr. Paul Epstein, the associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School and a medical doctor trained in tropical public health.

Along with mosquito-borne diseases like malaria, yellow fever and West Nile virus, tick-borne diseases also are an increasing problem, he said.

When winters are milder, more deer ticks reproduce year-round, transmitting infections such as Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Lyme disease cases increased from 11,700 cases in 1995 to 21,304 cases in 2005. This year could be a bad one for diseases spread by warm weather-loving insects — 2005 was the warmest year in the last 100 years, said NASA scientists.

This not only causes more biting bugs to flourish, it also indirectly impacts humans’ health in other ways. For example, when trees are weakened by drought, such as what’s happening in pine forests from Alaska to Arizona, beetles eat the bark, weakening the trees even more and making them prone to wildfires, Epstein said.

And those wildfires not only release more harmful carbon dioxide and soot into the atmosphere, they trigger another major health effect of global warming: asthma.

Ragweed Loves Carbon Dioxide

For years, doctors have noted an increase in asthma and allergies.

While no one can link the increase directly to global warming, Epstein has strong evidence: When ragweed — one of the most allergenic plants on the planet — is grown in a carbon dioxide-rich environment, it grows 10 percent faster than normal, but produces 60 percent more pollen.

While that’s good for the plants, it’s bad for people. Most people are allergic to something, and often it is plant pollen. In children especially, being exposed to an allergen can trigger a dangerous asthmatic response, or inflammation of the lungs.

“As we see the seasons change and warmer weather has an earlier arrival in the spring, we’re beginning to see shifts in asthma and allergies,” Epstein said.

What’s worse, he said, is that the tiny dust particles emitted from diesel fuel attach to plant pollens, and these diesel particles further irritate the lining of the lung.

Though there haven’t been published studies showing that the rise in asthma cases is tied to global warming, Epstein said it is.

“We’re seeing it and we’re all experiencing it,” he said.

http://tinyurl.com/2hq9la