Climate-based Biotechnology Model of Dengue Outbreaks Out Now

Dengue Fever (DF) and Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever (DHF) are the most significant vector-originated viral diseases in the World. Around 50-100 million cases take place each year exposing 2.5 billion people at risk of suffering this hurting and sometimes fatal disease. Dengue Fever is common in the Tropics. For that cause, an interdisciplinary team of researchers from the University of Miami (UM) and the University of Costa Rica have used global climatological data and vegetation indices from Costa Rica, to predict Dengue spread in the region. The new model can assume Dengue Fever epidemics with 83% accuracy, up to 40 weeks in advance of an outbreak and give information on the magnitude of future epidemics. The model can be expanded to include the broader region of Latin America and the Caribbean, where incidence and spread of the disease has risen seriously over the previous 25 years.

A prior warning system to dismiss and diminish the spread of the disease can potentially be progressed using this model, explained Douglas O. Fuller, associate professor and chair of the department of Geography and Regional Studies in the UM College of Arts and Sciences and principal investigator of this project.

Vector-originated diseases, such DF and DHF, are those in which the disease is transmitted from an infected individual to another by a biological agent. In the matter of Dengue, one of four closely related Dengue viruses is transmitted to humans by the Aedes aegypti or more rarely the Aedes albopictus mosquito, sometimes with other animals serving as intermediary hosts. Most of the world’s population infected by Dengue (also known as “breakbone fever”) is situated in tropical and subtropical areas of the globe, where the weather is dominated by rainfall.

This project focuses at climate and vegetation variables that have an impact on the mosquito populations in the American Tropics, such as El Niño Southern Oscillations, sea-surface temperatures and seasonal vegetation dynamics that affect evaporation and humidity close to the ground.

The study adds to the rapidly emerging field of climate and infectious disease, which addresses growing concerns that global warming, will worsen certain diseases like Dengue Fever and allow the vectors to spread to more temperate areas. The discoveries of this study were published earlier this year in the Institute of Physics journal Environmental Research Letters.

The model predicted a significant Dengue epidemic of 2005 and has also been tested on data from Trinidad and Singapore with extremely accurate results.

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