Climate Change and Aedes Vectors: 21st Century Projections for Dengue Transmission in Europe.
other · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 27322480.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1016/j.ebiom.2016.03.046 and PMC identifier 4909611.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Warming temperatures may increase the geographic spread of vector-borne diseases into temperate areas. Although a tropical mosquito-borne viral disease, a dengue outbreak occurred in Madeira, Portugal, in 2012; the first in Europe since 1920s. This outbreak emphasizes the potential for dengue re-emergence in Europe given changing climates. We present estimates of dengue epidemic potential using vectorial capacity (VC) based on historic and projected temperature (1901-2099). VC indicates the vectors' ability to spread disease among humans. We calculated temperature-dependent VC for Europe, highlighting 10 European cities and three non-European reference cities. Compared with the tropics, Europe shows pronounced seasonality and geographical heterogeneity. Although low, VC during summer is currently sufficient for dengue outbreaks in Southern Europe to commence-if sufficient vector populations (either Ae. aegypti and Ae. albopictus) were active and virus were introduced. Under various climate change scenarios, the seasonal peak and time window for dengue epidemic potential increases during the 21st century. Our study maps dengue epidemic potential in Europe and identifies seasonal time windows when major cities are most conducive for dengue transmission from 1901 to 2099. Our findings illustrate, that besides vector control, mitigating greenhouse gas emissions crucially reduces the future epidemic potential of dengue in Europe.
Medical subject headings
- Aedes
- Dengue
- Epidemics