Study offers insights for communicating about wildlife, zoonotic disease amid COVID-19
(North Carolina State University) A new study from North Carolina State University found that certain types of messages could influence how people perceive information about the spread of diseases from wildlife to humans. (Source: EurekAlert! - Medicine and Health)
Source: EurekAlert! - Medicine and Health - June 2, 2021 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: news
Future Pandemic? Consider Radically Altering Animal Agriculture Practices
(Florida Atlantic University) Almost three-quarters of emerging infectious diseases are spread between animals and people. COVID-19 is the latest and most impactful zoonotic event of the modern era. Researchers offer three plausible solutions to mitigate zoonotic risk associated with intensive animal agriculture. They explore incentivizing plant-based and cell-based animal source food alternatives through government subsidies, disincentivizing intensive animal source food production through the adoption of a " zoonotic tax, " and eliminating intensive animal source food production through a total ban. (Source: EurekAlert! ...
Source: EurekAlert! - Infectious and Emerging Diseases - June 2, 2021 Category: Infectious Diseases Source Type: news
Jane Goodall: If We Don’t Make Peace With Nature, Expect More Deadly Pandemics
The famed primatologist spent the quarantine broadcasting to the world about the threat of climate change, zoonotic disease and biodiversity loss. (Source: Science - The Huffington Post)
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - May 28, 2021 Category: Science Source Type: news
Why Our Best Defence Against Future Pandemics is Data
Scientists in Thailand work to combat zoonotic diseases at their source. The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates “intimate” linkages between the health of humans, animals and ecosystems, as zoonotic diseases spread between animals and people, the World Health Organization (WHO) chief said February 21. Credit: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) via UN NewsBy Andy PetersEDINBURGH, Scotland, May 24 2021 (IPS) Although the World Health Organization’s (WHO) mission to discover its origins has proven inconclusive, the Covid-19 pandemic has nonetheless clearly highlighted the need for better care, attention, and in...
Source: IPS Inter Press Service - Health - May 24, 2021 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Andy Peters Tags: Featured Global Headlines Health Human Rights Humanitarian Emergencies TerraViva United Nations Source Type: news
Extra Life: A Short History of Living Longer review – the gobsmacking truth about vaccines
Want a booster shot of knowledge? David Olusoga and Steven Johnson ’s new show will teach you about the magic, and the horrors, behind the medical breakthroughs of our timeIn 1900, the average global life expectancy was 32. Today, a tiny blink of historical time later, it ’s twice that. In a developed country, you will most likely live to see your grandchildren and can hope not unreasonably to see a great-grandson or daughter, too. The new four-part series Extra Life: A Short History of Living Longer (BBC Four), presented byhistorian David Olusoga and US science writer Steven Johnson, explores how a handful of medical ...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - May 18, 2021 Category: Science Authors: Lucy Mangan Tags: Television & radio Culture Vaccines and immunisation Health Society Race World news Slavery History of science Medical research Coronavirus Infectious diseases Source Type: news
COVID-19's Origins Need Further Investigation, Say Scientists
A letter signed by 18 researchers argues that hypotheses about zoonotic spillover or accidental lab release both "remain viable" in the absence of additional evidence. (Source: The Scientist)
Source: The Scientist - May 14, 2021 Category: Science Tags: News & Opinion Source Type: news
Timing the SARS-CoV-2 index case in Hubei province
Understanding when severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) emerged is critical to evaluating our current approach to monitoring novel zoonotic pathogens and understanding the failure of early containment and mitigation efforts for COVID-19. We used a coalescent framework to combine retrospective molecular clock inference with forward epidemiological simulations to determine how long SARS-CoV-2 could have circulated before the time of the most recent common ancestor of all sequenced SARS-CoV-2 genomes. Our results define the period between mid-October and mid-November 2019 as the plausible interval when...
Source: ScienceNOW - April 22, 2021 Category: Science Authors: Pekar, J., Worobey, M., Moshiri, N., Scheffler, K., Wertheim, J. O. Tags: Epidemiology, Evolution reports Source Type: news
Systematic review: comparison of the main variables of interest in publications of canine bite accidents in the written press, gray and scientific literature in Chile and Spain, between the years 2013 and 2017 - Barrios CL, Aguirre V, Parra A, Pavletic C, Bustos-L ópez C, Pérez S, Urrutia C, Ramirez J, Fatjó J.
Dog bites are a major public health problem, with consequences such as physical injury, psychological trauma, transmission of zoonoses, infections, and economic costs. For this reason, it is necessary to develop preventive programs, which require quality i... (Source: SafetyLit)
Source: SafetyLit - April 5, 2021 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Tags: Economics of Injury and Safety, PTSD, Injury Outcomes Source Type: news
Ranking virus spillover risk
(University of California - Davis) SpillOver, a new web application developed by scientists at the University of California, Davis, and contributed to by experts from all over the world, ranks the risk of wildlife-to-human spillover for newly-discovered viruses. SpillOver, linked to a new study in PNAS, is the first open-source risk assessment tool that evaluates wildlife viruses to estimate their zoonotic spillover and pandemic potential. (Source: EurekAlert! - Infectious and Emerging Diseases)
Source: EurekAlert! - Infectious and Emerging Diseases - April 5, 2021 Category: Infectious Diseases Source Type: news
A diversity of wildlife is good for our health
(Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies) A growing body of evidence suggests that biodiversity loss increases our exposure to both new and established zoonotic pathogens. Restoring and protecting nature is essential to preventing future pandemics. So reports a new Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) paper that synthesizes current understanding about how biodiversity affects human health and provides recommendations for future research to guide management. (Source: EurekAlert! - Infectious and Emerging Diseases)
Source: EurekAlert! - Infectious and Emerging Diseases - April 5, 2021 Category: Infectious Diseases Source Type: news
Factors that may predict next pandemic
(University of Sydney) New modelling identifies country-specific human and human-influenced environmental factors associated with disease outbreaks. A country's land area, human population density, and area of forest are associated with zoonotic diseases, like COVID-19. Human development index, average annual temperature, and health expenditure predict other kinds of disease. (Source: EurekAlert! - Infectious and Emerging Diseases)
Source: EurekAlert! - Infectious and Emerging Diseases - March 29, 2021 Category: Infectious Diseases Source Type: news
Disease outbreaks more likely in deforestation areas, study finds
Tree-planting can also increase health risks if it focuses too narrowly on small number of species, paper saysOutbreaks of infectious diseases are more likely in areas of deforestation and monoculture plantations, according to a study that suggests epidemics are likely to increase as biodiversity declines.Land use change is a significant factor in the emergence of zoonotic viruses such as Covid-19 and vector-borne ailments such as malaria, saysthe paper, published on Wednesday in Frontiers in Veterinary Science.Continue reading... (Source: Guardian Unlimited Science)
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - March 24, 2021 Category: Science Authors: Jonathan Watts Tags: Deforestation Trees and forests Biodiversity Environment Infectious diseases Science World news Source Type: news
Recurrent deletions in the SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein drive antibody escape
Zoonotic pandemics, such as that caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), can follow the spillover of animal viruses into highly susceptible human populations. The descendants of these viruses have adapted to the human host and evolved to evade immune pressure. Coronaviruses acquire substitutions more slowly than other RNA viruses. In the spike glycoprotein, we found that recurrent deletions overcome this slow substitution rate. Deletion variants arise in diverse genetic and geographic backgrounds, transmit efficiently, and are present in novel lineages, including those of current global conc...
Source: ScienceNOW - March 11, 2021 Category: Science Authors: McCarthy, K. R., Rennick, L. J., Nambulli, S., Robinson-McCarthy, L. R., Bain, W. G., Haidar, G., Duprex, W. P. Tags: Virology reports Source Type: news
Legal wildlife trade needs monitoring to reduce risk of a new pandemic
(Oxford Brookes University) The illegal wildlife trade is often seen as one of the major gateways to zoonotic diseases, that spread from animals to humans. While the illegal trade in tigers, ivory, rhino horn, pangolins and primates is of paramount concern for public health, Professor Nijman says the legal wildlife trade should be of equal concern. (Source: EurekAlert! - Infectious and Emerging Diseases)
Source: EurekAlert! - Infectious and Emerging Diseases - March 4, 2021 Category: Infectious Diseases Source Type: news
Agents of food-borne zoonoses confirmed to parasitise newly-recorded in Thailand snails
(Pensoft Publishers) Parasitic flatworms known as agents of food-borne zoonoses were confirmed to use several species of thiarid snails, commonly found in freshwater and brackish environments in southeast Asia, as their first intermediate host. These parasites can cause severe ocular infections in humans who consume raw or improperly cooked fish that have fed on parasitised snails. The study, conducted in South Thailand, is published in the peer-reviewed open-access journalZoosystematics and Evolution. (Source: EurekAlert! - Biology)
Source: EurekAlert! - Biology - February 26, 2021 Category: Biology Source Type: news