Invasion of tick-borne disease
Modelling the spatial spread of vector-borne zoonotic pathogens maintained in enzootic transmission cycles remains a major challenge. The best available spatio-temporal data on pathogen spread often take the form of human disease surveillance data. By applying a classic ecological approach—occupancy modelling—to an epidemiological question of disease spread, we used surveillance data to examine the latent ecological invasion of tick-borne pathogens. Over the last half-century, previously undescribed tick-borne pathogens including the agents of Lyme disease and human babesiosis have rapidly spread across the northeast United States. Despite their epidemiological importance, the mechanisms of tick-borne pathogen invasion and drivers underlying the distinct invasion trajectories of the co-vectored pathogens remain unresolved. Our approach allowed us to estimate the unobserved ecological processes underlying pathogen spread while accounting for imperfect detection of human cases. Our model predicts that tick-borne diseases spread in a diffusion-like manner with occasional long-distance dispersal and that babesiosis spread exhibits strong dependence on Lyme disease.
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - Category: Biology Authors: Walter, K. S., Pepin, K. M., Webb, C. T., Gaff, H. D., Krause, P. J., Pitzer, V. E., Diuk-Wasser, M. A. Tags: ecology, health and disease and epidemiology Research articles Source Type: research
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