Wet climate and transportation routes accelerate spread of human plague

Abstract

Currently, large-scale transmissions of infectious diseases are becoming more closely associated with accelerated globalization and climate change, but quantitative analyses are still rare. By using an extensive dataset consisting of date and location of cases for the third plague pandemic from 1772 to 1964 in China and a novel method (nearest neighbour approach) which deals with both short-and long-distance transmissions, we found the presence of major roads, rivers and coastline accelerated the spread of plague and shaped the transmission patterns. We found that plague spread velocity was positively associated with wet conditions (measured by an index of drought and flood events) in China, probably due to flood-driven transmission by people or rodents. Our study provides new insights on transmission patterns and possible mechanisms behind variability in transmission speed, with implications for prevention and control measures. The methodology may also be applicable to studies of disease dynamics or species movement in other systems.

How old are bacterial pathogens?

“…In turn, 1.IN3 is the last known population that branched off before 1.ORI, which spread globally to cause the ongoing Third Pandemic from Hong Kong in 1894. The plague epidemic in Hong Kong is linked by epidemiological data from the nineteenth century to Yunnan province [51], which was the sole source of 1.IN3.…”

The trophic responses of two different rodent–vector–plague systems to climate change

“…), and these factors are closely connected with each other. Yet, although the relationship between climatic factors and the dynamics of disease has been studied frequently [11][12][13][14][15], this is seldom done within the context of a full trophic web, whether via bottom-up (e.g. resource limitation) or top-down pathways (e.g.…”

“…the Justinian, which started in AD 541, the Black Death in AD 1347 and the Third Pandemic in AD 1772) [15,16]. Plague is still active in many parts of the world.…”

Lessons Learned from Historic Plague Epidemics: The Relevance of an Ancient Disease in Modern Times

“…New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, Utah) perhaps further eastward or toward higher latitudes and/or even higher altitudes [112]. Other, recent studies, demonstrated that environmental factors such as high levels of precipitation and flooding events resulted in increased spread velocity of plague in China and Vietnam [116,117]. The effects of global climate change have been previously described in great detail for many other vector-borne diseases, such as malaria and dengue fever [118,119] considering this evidence, it would be reasonable to assume that climate change can similarly affect the spread and dissemination of plague within the vector and rodent population, ultimately affecting the occurrence of plague within the human population as well.…”