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Biomedical subjects

David J Rogers

Publications and source records attributed to David J Rogers.

14 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

Estimating the malaria risk of African mosquito movement by air travel.

BACKGROUND: The expansion of global travel has resulted in the importation of African Anopheles mosquitoes, giving rise to cases of local malaria transmission. Here, cases of 'airport malaria' are used to quantify, using a combination of global climate and air traffic volume, where and when are the greatest risks of a Plasmodium falciparum-carrying mosquito being importated by air. This prioritises areas at risk of further airport malaria and possible importation or reemergence of the disease. METHODS: Monthly data on climate at the World's major airports were combined with air traffic information and African malaria seasonality maps to identify, month-by-month, those existing and future air routes at greatest risk of African malaria-carrying mosquito importation and temporary establishment. RESULTS: The location and timing of recorded airport malaria cases proved predictable using a combination of climate and air traffic data. Extending the analysis beyond the current air network architecture enabled identification of the airports and months with greatest climatic similarity to P. falciparum endemic regions of Africa within their principal transmission seasons, and therefore at risk should new aviation routes become operational. CONCLUSION: With the growth of long haul air travel from Africa, the identification of the seasonality and routes of mosquito importation is important in guiding effective aircraft disinsection and vector control. The recent and continued addition of air routes from Africa to more climatically similar regions than Europe will increase movement risks. The approach outlined here is capable of identifying when and where these risks are greatest.

Africa↗
PubMed2006

Global traffic and disease vector dispersal.

The expansion of global air travel and seaborne trade overcomes geographic barriers to insect disease vectors, enabling them to move great distances in short periods of time. Here we apply a coupled human-environment framework to describe the historical spread of Aedes albopictus, a competent mosquito vector of 22 arboviruses in the laboratory. We contrast this dispersal with the relatively unchanged distribution of Anopheles gambiae and examine possible future movements of this malaria vector. We use a comprehensive database of international ship and aircraft traffic movements, combined with climatic information, to remap the global transportation network in terms of disease vector suitability and accessibility. The expansion of the range of Ae. albopictus proved to be surprisingly predictable using this combination of climate and traffic data. Traffic volumes were more than twice as high on shipping routes running from the historical distribution of Ae. albopictus to ports where it has established in comparison with routes to climatically similar ports where it has yet to invade. In contrast, An. gambiae has rarely spread from Africa, which we suggest is partly due to the low volume of sea traffic from the continent and, until very recently, a European destination for most flights.

Aedes↗
PubMed2005

Climate variability and malaria epidemics in the highlands of East Africa.

Malaria epidemics in the highlands of East Africa garner significant research attention, due, in part, to their proposed sensitivity to climate change. In a recent article, Zhou et al. claim that increases in climate variance, rather than simple increases in climate mean values, have had an important role in the resurgence of malaria epidemics in the East African highlands since the early 1980s. If proven, this would be an interesting result but we believe that the methods used do not test the hypothesis suggested.

Africa, Eastern↗
PubMed2005

Climate change and the recent emergence of bluetongue in Europe.

Bluetongue, a devastating disease of ruminants, has historically made only brief, sporadic incursions into the fringes of Europe. However, since 1998, six strains of bluetongue virus have spread across 12 countries and 800 km further north in Europe than has previously been reported. We suggest that this spread has been driven by recent changes in European climate that have allowed increased virus persistence during winter, the northward expansion of Culicoides imicola, the main bluetongue virus vector, and, beyond this vector's range, transmission by indigenous European Culicoides species - thereby expanding the risk of transmission over larger geographical regions. Understanding this sequence of events may help us predict the emergence of other vector-borne pathogens.

Animals↗
PubMed2003

Studying the global distribution of infectious diseases using GIS and RS.

West Nile virus, severe acute respiratory syndrome and monkeypox are infectious diseases that have recently been introduced into areas far from their region of origin. The greatest risk of new diseases comes from zoonoses--pathogens that circulate among wild animals and are occasionally transferred to humans by intermediate invertebrate hosts or vectors that are sensitive to climatic conditions. Analytical tools that are based on geographical information systems and that can incorporate remotely sensed information about the environment offer the potential to define the limiting conditions for any disease in its native region for which there are at least some distribution data. The direction, intensity or likelihood of its spread to new regions could then be predicted, potentially allowing disease early-warning systems to be developed.

Animals↗
PubMed2002

Climate change and the resurgence of malaria in the East African highlands.

The public health and economic consequences of Plasmodium falciparum malaria are once again regarded as priorities for global development. There has been much speculation on whether anthropogenic climate change is exacerbating the malaria problem, especially in areas of high altitude where P. falciparum transmission is limited by low temperature. The International Panel on Climate Change has concluded that there is likely to be a net extension in the distribution of malaria and an increase in incidence within this range. We investigated long-term meteorological trends in four high-altitude sites in East Africa, where increases in malaria have been reported in the past two decades. Here we show that temperature, rainfall, vapour pressure and the number of months suitable for P. falciparum transmission have not changed significantly during the past century or during the period of reported malaria resurgence. A high degree of temporal and spatial variation in the climate of East Africa suggests further that claimed associations between local malaria resurgences and regional changes in climate are overly simplistic.

Africa, Eastern↗
PubMed2002

Satellite imagery in the study and forecast of malaria.

More than 30 years ago, human beings looked back from the Moon to see the magnificent spectacle of Earth-rise. The technology that put us into space has since been used to assess the damage we are doing to our natural environment and is now being harnessed to monitor and predict diseases through space and time. Satellite sensor data promise the development of early-warning systems for diseases such as malaria, which kills between 1 and 2 million people each year.

Animals↗
PubMed2002

A quantitative evaluation of radiolabelled lectin retention on oral mucosa in vitro and in vivo.

Previous work has identified lectins that bind to the cells present on the oral mucosa for their potential use as a means of retaining a drug delivery system on the mucosal surfaces of the mouth. In this study, a radiolabelling technique was developed to allow the quantification of lectin binding to human buccal cells in vitro, and the retention of the lectins in the oral cavity of a rat model in vivo. Lectins were labelled with 99mTc using a cyclic diethylene triamine pentaacetic acid conjugation technique. In the in vitro study, human buccal cells were obtained by scraping the inner surface of the cheek. The suspended cells were exposed to the labelled lectin solution for 30 min and after washing with buffer the activity associated with the cells determined. In the in vivo study, male Wistar rats were briefly anaesthetized during which 10 microl of a solution containing labelled lectin was applied into the buccal pouch. At set times the rats were killed and the lower buccal cavity mucosal tissue and tongue dissected out and monitored for bound lectin. The in vitro study indicated that the lectins from Arachis Hypogaea, Canavalia ensiformis and Triticum vulgaris bound to oral mucosal cells. The T. vulgaris lectin showed the greatest binding, calculated to be 6.77 x 10(9) molecules per cell. The in vivo retention of C. ensiformis and T. vulgaris lectins on rat oral mucosal tissue was also evident. The T. vulgaris lectin showed significantly higher levels of retained lectin after 30 min (29.54 +/- 4.20 microg SD) on the oral mucosal tissue and 28.37 microg (+/-2.13 SD) on the tongue and was still detected at similar levels after 2 h. These studies indicate that significant lectin binding to human buccal cells occurs in vitro and retention in an animal model occurs for over 2 h in vivo. The T. vulgaris lectin showed most promise for further work.

Animals↗
PubMed2002

Mapping bovine tuberculosis in Great Britain using environmental data.

The incidence of bovine tuberculosis (BTB) is increasing in Great Britain, exacerbated by the temporary suspension of herd testing in 2001 for fear of spreading the much more contagious foot and mouth disease. The transmission pathways of BTB remain poorly understood. Current hypotheses suggest the disease is introduced into susceptible herds from a wildlife reservoir (principally the Eurasian Badger) and/or from cattle purchased from infected areas, while the role of climatic factors in transmission has generally been ignored. Here, we show how remotely sensed satellite data, which provide good indicators of a variety of climatic factors, can be used to describe the distribution of BTB in Great Britain in 1997, and suggest how such data could be used to produce BTB risk maps for the future.

Animals↗
PubMed2002

Hot topic or hot air? Climate change and malaria resurgence in East African highlands.

Climate has a significant impact on malaria incidence and we have predicted that forecast climate changes might cause some modifications to the present global distribution of malaria close to its present boundaries. However, it is quite another matter to attribute recent resurgences of malaria in the highlands of East Africa to climate change. Analyses of malaria time-series at such sites have shown that malaria incidence has increased in the absence of co-varying changes in climate. We find the widespread increase in resistance of the malaria parasite to drugs and the decrease in vector control activities to be more likely driving forces behind the malaria resurgence.

Africa, Eastern↗
PubMed2002

A response to the aim of eradicating tsetse from Africa.

An ambitious plan to eradicate tsetse, and therefore tsetse-transmitted trypanosomiases, from Africa was launched at the 36th Organization of African Unity summit meeting (Togo, July 2000) in a bold attempt to re-focus attention on one of Africa's greatest scourges. This plan involves the use of the sterile insect technique to achieve final eradication in areas where the fly is suppressed by more conventional methods (such as traps and targets). In this article, the current aims of this project are questioned on historical, ecological, logistical and financial grounds.

Africa↗
PubMed2002

Remotely sensed correlates of phylogeny: tick-borne flaviviruses.

Vector-borne pathogen systems are limited by climate, principally through its impact on the distribution, abundance and population dynamics of the vectors and on the interaction of vectors with their hosts. This leads to the prediction that climate has been a significant factor in the evolution of these pathogens and, by implication, will be important in future events on both evolutionary and ecological time-scales. New phylogenetic trees of organisms, that describe their evolutionary history, are routinely available, but explanations for the driving force and constraints that have shaped the evolutionary origin of new pathogen strains are rare. Under the force of environmental pressures that change in space and time, which pathogens are likely to emerge in new places and where will this be? To answer such questions, data from molecular biology can be linked with data from satellites that allow us to characterize environmental conditions on a global scale. Broad-scale patterns in the satellite imagery are consistent with the pattern of new tick-borne flaviviruses having evolved sequentially in a cline across the world. So far, the distribution of three tick-borne flaviviruses from western Europe have been captured simultaneously by the same 10 satellite-derived seasonal climatic variables. Once this procedure is extended to the remaining viruses in this clade, we shall test for significant matches between their phylogenetic tree and an independent tree derived from quantitative descriptions of the viruses' 'eco-space'. This will indicate the extent of key ecological drivers for specific evolutionary events, whose biological basis can then be explored in detail.

Animals↗
PubMed2002

Development, survival, body weight, longevity, and reproductive potential of Oemena hirta (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae) under different rearing conditions.

Oemona hirta (F.) is a New Zealand native longicorn beetle, whose larvae bore into the wood of branches and stems of living trees and vines, causing serious damage. To explore effective methods for maintaining laboratory colonies and biology of immature stages of this species we evaluated four laboratory rearing methods with both natural and artificial diets and compared biological parameters of laboratory colonies with those of field-collected insects. On an artificial diet, approximately 40% of neonate and 70% of autumn- and 11% of winter-collected larvae reached adulthood. Neonate larvae could not complete their development in cut poplar (Populus nigra variety italica Koehne) twigs; however, when twigs were standing in water >46% of neonate larvae survived to adulthood. Mean larval development time ranged from approximately150 to almost 300 d, depending on rearing methods. Mean pupal stage ranged from 15 to 19 d. Adult females were significantly heavier than males. Although adult females from field-collected twigs and reared on the artificial diet had similar mean body weight, which was significantly greater than that of other rearing colonies, the potential fecundity was the highest in the former (83.1 +/- 29.4 eggs) and the lowest in the latter (33.5 +/- 9.1 eggs). In all laboratory-reared and field-collected insects, the total number of eggs produced (eggs laid + eggs that remained in dead female body) by females was positively correlated with their body weight. When larvae fed on the artificial diet, there was no positive correlation between the number of eggs successfully laid and female body weight. However, when larvae lived on natural food, a positive correlation was found. In laboratory colonies, mean longevity of females (36 to 52 d) was slightly greater than that of males (30 to 50 d) without significant difference between sexes but in the adults from field-collected twigs, males (52 d) lived significantly longer than females (33 d). In terms of time, labor, and the number of resulting adults, collecting larvae in the field in autumn and then transferring them onto artificial diet is the most effective method for maintaining a laboratory colony.

Animals↗