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Management of invading pathogens should be informed by epidemiology rather than administrative boundaries.

ABSTRACT: Plant and animal disease outbreaks have significant ecological and economic impacts. The spatial extent of control is often informed solely by administrative geography - for example, quarantine of an entire county or state once an invading disease is detected - with little regard for pathogen epidemiology. We present a stochastic model for the spread of a plant pathogen that couples spread in the natural environment and transmission via the nursery trade, and use it to illustrate that control deployed according to administrative boundaries is almost always sub-optimal. We use sudden oak death (caused by Phytophthora ramorum) in mixed forests in California as motivation for our study, since the decision as to whether or not to deploy plant trade quarantine is currently undertaken on a county-by-county basis for that system. However, our key conclusion is applicable more generally: basing management of any disease entirely upon administrative borders does not balance the cost of control with the possible economic and ecological costs of further spread in the optimal fashion.

SUBMITTER: Thompson RN

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4767045 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Management of invading pathogens should be informed by epidemiology rather than administrative boundaries.

Thompson Robin N RN Cobb Richard C RC Gilligan Christopher A CA Cunniffe Nik J NJ

Ecological modelling 20160301

Plant and animal disease outbreaks have significant ecological and economic impacts. The spatial extent of control is often informed solely by administrative geography - for example, quarantine of an entire county or state once an invading disease is detected - with little regard for pathogen epidemiology. We present a stochastic model for the spread of a plant pathogen that couples spread in the natural environment and transmission via the nursery trade, and use it to illustrate that control de ...[more]

PMID: 27019546

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Project description:New invading pathogen strains must compete with endemic pathogen strains to emerge and spread. As disease control measures are often non-specific, that is, they do not distinguish between strains, applying control not only affects the invading pathogen strain but the endemic as well. We hypothesize that the control of the invasive strain could be compromised due to the non-specific nature of the control.A spatially explicit model, describing the East African cassava mosaic virus-Uganda strain (EACMV-UG) outbreak, is used to evaluate methods of controlling both disease incidence and spread of invading pathogen strains in pathosystems with and without an endemic pathogen strain present.We find that while many newly introduced or intensified control measures (such as resistant cultivars or roguing) decrease the expected incidence, they have the unintended consequence of increasing, or at least not reducing, the speed with which the invasive pathogen spreads geographically. We identify the controls that cause this effect and methods in which these controls may be applied to prevent it.We found that the spatial spread of the invading strain is chiefly governed by the incidence at the wave front. Control can therefore be applied, or intensified, once the wave front has passed without increasing the pathogen's rate of spread.When trade of planting material occurs, it is possible that the planting material is already infected. The only forms of control in this study that reduces the speed of geographic spread, regardless of the presence of an endemic strain, are those that reduce the amount of trade and the distance over which trade takes place. Synthesis and applications. The best control strategy depends on the presence of competing endemic strains. Applying or intensifying the control can slow the rate of spread when absent but increase it if present. Imposing trade restrictions before the epidemic has reached a given area and intensifying other control methods only when the wave front has passed is the most effective way of both slowing down spread and controlling incidence when a competing endemic strain is present and is the safest approach when its presence is unknown.

Project description:BackgroundMost research scientists working in the fields of molecular epidemiology, population and evolutionary genetics are confronted with the management of large volumes of data. Moreover, the data used in studies of infectious diseases are complex and usually derive from different institutions such as hospitals or laboratories. Since no public database scheme incorporating clinical and epidemiological information about patients and molecular information about pathogens is currently available, we have developed an information system, composed by a main database and a web-based interface, which integrates both types of data and satisfies requirements of good organization, simple accessibility, data security and multi-user support.ResultsFrom the moment a patient arrives to a hospital or health centre until the processing and analysis of molecular sequences obtained from infectious pathogens in the laboratory, lots of information is collected from different sources. We have divided the most relevant data into 12 conceptual modules around which we have organized the database schema. Our schema is very complete and it covers many aspects of sample sources, samples, laboratory processes, molecular sequences, phylogenetics results, clinical tests and results, clinical information, treatments, pathogens, transmissions, outbreaks and bibliographic information. Communication between end-users and the selected Relational Database Management System (RDMS) is carried out by default through a command-line window or through a user-friendly, web-based interface which provides access and management tools for the data.ConclusionepiPATH is an information system for managing clinical and molecular information from infectious diseases. It facilitates daily work related to infectious pathogens and sequences obtained from them. This software is intended for local installation in order to safeguard private data and provides advanced SQL-users the flexibility to adapt it to their needs. The database schema, tool scripts and web-based interface are free software but data stored in our database server are not publicly available. epiPATH is distributed under the terms of GNU General Public License. More details about epiPATH can be found at http://genevo.uv.es/epipath.

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Management of invading pathogens should be informed by epidemiology rather than administrative boundaries.

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Management of invading pathogens should be informed by epidemiology rather than administrative boundaries.

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