Emerging Zoonoses Eco Epidemiology Involved Mechanisms And Public Health Implications

Zoonoses are currently considered as one of the most important threats for public health worldwide. Zoonoses can be defined as any disease or infection that is naturally transmissible from vertebrate or invertebrate animals to humans and vice-versa. Approximately 75% of recently emerging infectious diseases affecting humans are diseases of animal origin; approximately 60% of all human pathogens are zoonotic. All types of potential pathogenic agents, including viruses, parasites, bacteria and fungi, can cause these zoonotic infections. From the wide range of potential vectors of zoonoses, insects are probably those of major significance due to their abundance, high plasticity and adaptability to different kinds of pathogens, high degrees of synanthropism in several groups and difficulties to apply effective programs of population control. Although ticks, flies, cockroaches, bugs and fleas are excellent insects capable to transmit viruses, parasites and bacteria, undoubtedly mosquitoes are the most important disease vectors. Mosquito borne diseases like malaria, dengue, equine encephalitis, West Nile, Mayaro or Chikungunya are zoonoses with increasing incidence in last years in tropical and temperate countries. Vertebrates can also transmit serious zoonoses, highlighting the role of some carnivorous animals in rabies dissemination or the spread of rodent borne diseases in several rural and urban areas. Moreover, the significance of other food borne zoonoses such as taeniasis, trichinellosis or toxoplasmosis may not been underestimated. According to WHO, FAO and OIE guidelines an emerging zoonotic disease can be defined as a zoonosis that is newly recognized or newly evolved, or that has occurred previously but shows an increase of incidence or expansion in geographical, host or vector range. There are many factors that can provoke or accelerate the emergence of zoonoses, such as environmental changes, habitat modifications, variations of human and animal demography, pathogens and vectors anomalous mobilization related with human practices and globalization, deterioration of the strategies of vector control or changes in pathogen genetics. To reduce public health risks from zoonoses is absolutely necessary to acquire an integrative perspective that includes the study of the complexity of interactions among humans, animals and environment in order to be able to fight against these issues of primary interest for human health. In any case, although zoonoses represent significant public health threats, many of them still remain as neglected diseases and consequently are not prioritized by some health international organisms.

This volume offers an overview of the processes of zoonotic viral emergence, the intricacies of host/virus interactions, and the role of biological transitions and modifying factors. The themes introduced here are amplified and explored in detail by the contributing authors, who explore the mechanisms and unique circumstances by which evolution, biology, history, and current context have contrived to drive the emergence of different zoonotic agents by a series of related events.

This volume offers an overview of the processes of zoonotic viral emergence, the intricacies of host/virus interactions, and the role of biological transitions and modifying factors. The themes introduced here are amplified and explored in detail by the contributing authors, who explore the mechanisms and unique circumstances by which evolution, biology, history, and current context have contrived to drive the emergence of different zoonotic agents by a series of related events.

In the past half century, deadly disease outbreaks caused by novel viruses of animal origin - Nipah virus in Malaysia, Hendra virus in Australia, Hantavirus in the United States, Ebola virus in Africa, along with HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), several influenza subtypes, and the SARS (sudden acute respiratory syndrome) and MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome) coronaviruses - have underscored the urgency of understanding factors influencing viral disease emergence and spread. Emerging Viral Diseases is the summary of a public workshop hosted in March 2014 to examine factors driving the appearance, establishment, and spread of emerging, re-emerging and novel viral diseases; the global health and economic impacts of recently emerging and novel viral diseases in humans; and the scientific and policy approaches to improving domestic and international capacity to detect and respond to global outbreaks of infectious disease. This report is a record of the presentations and discussion of the event.

Global health is a rapidly emerging discipline with a transformative potential for public policy and international development. Emphasizing transnational health issues, global health aims to improve health and achieve health equity for all people worldwide. Its multidisciplinary scope includes contributions from many disciplines within and beyond the health sciences, including clinical medicine, public health, social and behavioral sciences, environmental sciences, economics, public policy, law and ethics. This large reference offers up-to-date information and expertise across all aspects of global health and helps readers to achieve a truly multidisciplinary understanding of the topics, trends as well as the clinical, socioeconomic and environmental drivers impacting global health. As a fully comprehensive, state-of-the-art and continuously updated, living reference, the Handbook of Global Health is an important, dynamic resource to provide context for global health clinical care, organizational decision-making, and overall public policy on many levels. Health workers, physicians, economists, environmental and social scientists, trainees and medical students as well as professionals and practitioners will find this handbook of great value.

Zoonotic diseases represent one of the leading causes of illness and death from infectious disease. Defined by the World Health Organization, zoonoses are "those diseases and infections that are naturally transmitted between vertebrate animals and man with or without an arthropod intermediate." Worldwide, zoonotic diseases have a negative impact on commerce, travel, and economies. In most developing countries, zoonotic diseases are among those diseases that contribute significantly to an already overly burdened public health system. In industrialized nations, zoonotic diseases are of particular concern for at-risk groups such as the elderly, children, childbearing women, and immunocompromised individuals. The Emergence of Zoonotic Diseases: Understanding the Impact on Animal and Human Health, covers a range of topics, which include: an evaluation of the relative importance of zoonotic diseases against the overall backdrop of emerging infections; research findings related to the current state of our understanding of zoonotic diseases; surveillance and response strategies to detect, prevent, and mitigate the impact of zoonotic diseases on human health; and information about ongoing programs and actions being taken to identify the most important needs in this vital area.

This accessible book describes a fascinating range of emerging infectious disease outbreaks affecting humans, including rabies, Ebola virus, Lyme disease, bubonic plague, and of course, Covid-19. The book also covers emerging infectious diseases in wildlife, such as Tasmanian devil facial tumour disease, white nose syndrome, mange, and musk ox lungworm. These case studies span the entire range of zoonotic disease emergence pathways, from sheep testicles in Wyoming, USA to butchered bush rats in Vietnam! Transmission dynamics are examined from diverse perspectives - from global drivers of pathogen emergence (including globalization, land use patterns, and changing climates) to outbreak epidemiology (epidemic curves and disease spillover), to conservation and control interventions. Despite a recent explosion of courses on the topic, and a viral pandemic that has affected the entire world, this is the first textbook to focus on pathogen spillover ecology at the human—wildlife interface. Emerging Zoonotic and Wildlife Pathogens serves as an introduction to this multidisciplinary field for upper-level undergraduate students and graduate students interested in disease ecology, veterinary epidemiology, public health, and conservation. It will also be relevant to a broader interdisciplinary audience of conservation biologists and public health specialists, and even the interested public.

Despite often violent fluctuations in nature, species extinction is rare. California red scale, a potentially devastating pest of citrus, has been suppressed for fifty years in California to extremely low yet stable densities by its controlling parasitoid. Some larch budmoth populations undergo extreme cycles; others never cycle. In Consumer-Resource Dynamics, William Murdoch, Cherie Briggs, and Roger Nisbet use these and numerous other biological examples to lay the groundwork for a unifying theory applicable to predator-prey, parasitoid-host, and other consumer-resource interactions. Throughout, the focus is on how the properties of real organisms affect population dynamics. The core of the book synthesizes and extends the authors' own models involving insect parasitoids and their hosts, and explores in depth how consumer species compete for a dynamic resource. The emerging general consumer-resource theory accounts for how consumers respond to differences among individuals in the resource population. From here the authors move to other models of consumer-resource dynamics and population dynamics in general. Consideration of empirical examples, key concepts, and a necessary review of simple models is followed by examination of spatial processes affecting dynamics, and of implications for biological control of pest organisms. The book establishes the coherence and broad applicability of consumer-resource theory and connects it to single-species dynamics. It closes by stressing the theory's value as a hierarchy of models that allows both generality and testability in the field.