Climate Change Likely to Cause Uptick in Infectious Disease

by Adam Novak / TckTckTck Mosquito, a disease vector. Creative Commons: Enrique Dans, 2007 Climate change is creating conditions that are likely to increase the rate of infectious disease worldwide. That’s the key findings of two new studies that show viruses such as Ebola, H1N1 and TB, as well as dengue and yellow fevers could spread further and become more frequent because of our changing climate. In one recently published article, zoologists studied climate in two vastly different regions – the tropics and the Arctic – to gain an understanding of how climate change may affect the spread of disease. In both regions the scientists found that by altering and moving habitat zones of disease-carrying animals, climate change could be making outbreaks of diseases more frequent. Previously, scientists believed that parasites could not quickly jump from one host to another because of the way parasites and hosts co-evolve. This would, in effect, make new disease more rare as parasites would first have to evolve a genetic mutation in order to move to another species. However, the new analysis argues that these evolutionary jumps can come quicker then anticipated. Daniel Brooks said: “Even though a parasite might have a very specialized relationship with one […]