Modelling Spatiotemporal Patterns of Lyme Disease Emergence in Quebec.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Tutt-Guerette MA
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8470240 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Since its identification nearly 30 years ago, Lyme disease has continued to spread, and there have been increasing numbers of cases in the northeastern and north central US. The Lyme disease agent, Borrelia burgdorferi, causes infection by migration through tissues, adhesion to host cells, and evasion of immune clearance. Both innate and adaptive immune responses, especially macrophage- and antibody-mediated killing, are required for optimal control of the infection and spirochetal eradication. Ecological conditions favorable to the disease, and the challenge of prevention, predict that Lyme disease will be a continuing public health concern.
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Project description:The white-footed mouse (Peromyscus leucopus) has expanded its northern limit into southern Québec over the last few decades. P. leucopus is a great disperser and colonizer and is of particular interest because it is considered a primary reservoir for the spirochete bacterium that causes Lyme disease. There is no current information on the gene flow between mouse populations on the mountains and forest fragments found scattered throughout the Montérégie region in southern Québec, and whether various landscape barriers have an effect on their dispersal. We conducted a population genetics analysis on eleven P. leucopus populations using eleven microsatellite markers and showed that isolation by distance was weak, yet barriers were effective. The agricultural matrix had the least effect on gene flow, whereas highways and main rivers were effective barriers. The abundance of ticks collected from mice varied within the study area. Both ticks and mice were screened for the presence of the spirochete bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi, and we predicted areas of greater risk for Lyme disease. Merging our results with ongoing Lyme disease surveillance programs will help determine the future threat of this disease in Québec, and will contribute toward disease prevention and management strategies throughout fragmented landscapes in southern Canada.
| S-EPMC3728948 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Importance:The incidence and geographic range of Lyme disease continues to increase in the United States because of the expansion of Ixodes scapularis, the species of tick that is the main Lyme disease vector. Currently, no dynamic model for the disease spread exists that integrates information of both acarological and human case surveillance data. Objective:To characterize the spatiotemporal spread of Lyme disease in humans among counties in US endemic regions. Design, Setting, and Participants:This cross-sectional study modeled the spread of Lyme disease county-level case reporting, accounting for county-level demographic factors, environmental factors associated with tick presence and human exposure, and the spatiotemporal association between counties. The analyses were conducted between January and August 2019. The setting was 1405 counties in the following regions of the United States: West North Central, East North Central, New England, Middle Atlantic, and the South. Assessments were based on publicly available Lyme disease case data reported to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) between January 2000 and December 2017. Main Outcomes and Measures:Probability of reporting the first case of Lyme disease by county by year. Results:Between 2000 and 2017, a total of 497?569 Lyme disease cases were reported to the CDC in the study area. Reporting a first case of Lyme disease was associated with a county's and county's neighbors' forest coverage, elevation, percentage of population living in the wildland-urban interface, tick presence, county's population size, proportion of neighbors reporting cases, and neighbors' years since first reporting. The model that included these variables showed high predictive power, with a mean area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 81.1 (95% CI, 68.5-86.2). The model predicted the first reported Lyme disease case a mean (SD) of 5.5 (3.5) years earlier than was reported to the CDC, with a mean spread velocity estimated at 27.4 (95% CI, 13.6-54.4) km per year. Among 162 counties without reported cases, 47 (29.0%) had a high probability of reporting Lyme disease by 2018. The estimated mean time lag between the first reported case in a neighboring county and any county was 7 (95% CI, 3-8) years. Conclusions and Relevance:This study's findings suggest that, if updated regularly and expanded geographically, this predictive model could enable states and counties to develop more specific Lyme disease prevention and control plans, including improved sensitization of the general population and medical community.
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Project description:Global environmental changes are causing Lyme disease to emerge in Europe. The life cycle of Ixodes ricinus, the tick vector of Lyme disease, involves an ontogenetic niche shift, from the larval and nymphal stages utilizing a wide range of hosts, picking up the pathogens causing Lyme disease from small vertebrates, to the adult stage depending on larger (non-transmission) hosts, typically deer. Because of this complexity the role of different host species for emergence of Lyme disease remains controversial. Here, by analysing long-term data on incidence in humans over a broad geographical scale in Norway, we show that both high spatial and temporal deer population density increase Lyme disease incidence. However, the trajectories of deer population sizes play an overall limited role for the recent emergence of the disease. Our study suggests that managing deer populations will have some effect on disease incidence, but that Lyme disease may nevertheless increase as multiple drivers are involved.
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Project description:Public health authorities in Quebec have responded to the progressive emergence of Lyme disease (LD) with surveillance activities and education for family physicians (FPs) who are key actors in both vigilance and case management.To describe FPs' clinical experience with LD, their degree of knowledge, and their practices in two areas, one with known infected tick populations (Montérégie) and one without (regions nearby Montérégie).In the present descriptive cross-sectional study, FPs were recruited during educational sessions. They were asked to complete a questionnaire assessing their clinical experience with Lyme disease, their knowledge of signs and symptoms of LD, and their familiarity with accepted guidelines for diagnosing and treating LD in two clinical scenarios (tick bite and erythema migrans).A total of 201 FPs participated, mostly from Montérégie (n=151). Overall, results revealed a moderate lack of knowledge and suboptimal practices rather than systematically insufficient knowledge or inadequate practices. A majority of participants agreed to more education on LD. As expected, FPs from Montérégie had a higher clinical experience with tick bites (57% versus 25%), better knowledge of LD endemic areas in Canada and erythema migrans characteristics, and better management of erythema migrans (72% versus 50%).The present study documented the inappropriate intention to order serology tests for tick bites and the unjustified intention to use tick analysis for diagnostic purposes. Such practices should be discouraged because they are unnecessary and overuse collective laboratory and medical resources. In addition, public health authorities must pursue their education efforts regarding FPs to optimize case management.
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Project description:Lyme disease is the most prevalent vector-borne disease in North America, and both the annual incidence and geographic range are increasing. The emergence of Lyme disease has been attributed to a century-long recovery of deer, an important reproductive host for adult ticks. However, a growing body of evidence suggests that Lyme disease risk may now be more dynamically linked to fluctuations in the abundance of small-mammal hosts that are thought to infect the majority of ticks. The continuing and rapid increase in Lyme disease over the past two decades, long after the recolonization of deer, suggests that other factors, including changes in the ecology of small-mammal hosts may be responsible for the continuing emergence of Lyme disease. We present a theoretical model that illustrates how reductions in small-mammal predators can sharply increase Lyme disease risk. We then show that increases in Lyme disease in the northeastern and midwestern United States over the past three decades are frequently uncorrelated with deer abundance and instead coincide with a range-wide decline of a key small-mammal predator, the red fox, likely due to expansion of coyote populations. Further, across four states we find poor spatial correlation between deer abundance and Lyme disease incidence, but coyote abundance and fox rarity effectively predict the spatial distribution of Lyme disease in New York. These results suggest that changes in predator communities may have cascading impacts that facilitate the emergence of zoonotic diseases, the vast majority of which rely on hosts that occupy low trophic levels.
| S-EPMC3390851 | biostudies-other
Project description:The emergence of phenotypic diversity in a population of cells and their arrangement in space and time is one of the most fascinating features of living systems. In fact, understanding multicellularity is unthinkable without explaining the proximate and the ultimate causes of cell differentiation in time and space. Simpler forms of cell differentiation can be found in unicellular organisms, such as bacterial biofilm, where reversible cell differentiation results in phenotypically diverse populations. In this manuscript, we attempt to start with the simple case of reversible nongenetic phenotypic to construct a model of differentiation and pattern formation. Our model, which we refer to as noise-driven differentiation (NDD) model, is an attempt to consider the prevalence of noise in biological systems, alongside what is known about genetic switches and signaling, to create a simple model which generates spatiotemporal patterns from bottom-up. Our simulations indicate that the presence of noise in cells can lead to reversible differentiation and the addition of signaling can create spatiotemporal pattern.
| S-EPMC7182191 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Lyme disease is usually associated with forested habitats but has recently emerged on treeless islands in the Western Isles of Scotland. The environmental and human components of Lyme disease risk in open habitats remain unknown. We quantified the environmental hazard and risk factors for human tick bite exposure among treeless islands with low and high Lyme disease incidence in the Western Isles. We found a higher prevalence of Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato-infected ticks on high-incidence than on low-incidence islands (6.4% vs. 0.7%); we also found that residents of high-incidence islands reported increased tick bite exposure. Most tick bites (72.7%) occurred <1 km from the home, including many in home gardens. Residents of high Lyme disease incidence islands reported increasing problems with ticks; many suggested changing deer distribution as a potential driver. We highlight the benefits of an integrated approach in understanding the factors that contribute to Lyme disease emergence.
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Project description:Theory predicts that biodiversity changes due to climate warming can mediate the rate of disease emergence. The mechanisms linking biodiversity-disease relationships have been described both theoretically and empirically but remain poorly understood. We investigated the relations between host diversity and abundance and Lyme disease risk in southern Quebec, a region where Lyme disease is rapidly emerging. We found that both the abundance of small mammal hosts and the relative abundance of the tick's natural host, the white-footed mouse (Peromyscus leucopus), influenced measures of disease risk in tick vectors (Borrelia burgdorferi infection abundance and prevalence in tick vectors). Our results suggest that the increase in Lyme disease risk is modulated by regional processes involving the abundance and composition of small mammal assemblages. However, the nature and strength of these relationships was dependent both on time and geographic area. The strong effect of P. leucopus abundance on disease risk we report here is of significant concern, as this competent host is predicted to increase in abundance and occurrence in the region, with the northern shift in the range of North American species under climate warming.
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Project description:To elucidate pathogen-host interactions during early Lyme disease, we developed a mathematical model that explains the spatiotemporal dynamics of the characteristic first sign of the disease, a large (≥5-cm diameter) rash, known as an erythema migrans. The model predicts that the bacterial replication and dissemination rates are the primary factors controlling the speed that the rash spreads, whereas the rate that active macrophages are cleared from the dermis is the principle determinant of rash morphology. In addition, the model supports the clinical observations that antibiotic treatment quickly clears spirochetes from the dermis and that the rash appearance is not indicative of the efficacy of the treatment. The quantitative agreement between our results and clinical data suggest that this model could be used to develop more efficient drug treatments and may form a basis for modeling pathogen-host interactions in other emerging infectious diseases.
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