The University of Southampton
University of Southampton Institutional Repository

Climate drives the spatiotemporal dynamics of scrub typhus in China

Climate drives the spatiotemporal dynamics of scrub typhus in China
Climate drives the spatiotemporal dynamics of scrub typhus in China

Scrub typhus is a climate-sensitive and life-threatening vector-borne disease that poses a growing public health threat. Although the climate-epidemic associations of many vector-borne diseases have been studied for decades, the impacts of climate on scrub typhus remain poorly understood, especially in the context of global warming. Here we incorporate Chinese national surveillance data on scrub typhus from 2010 to 2019 into a climate-driven generalized additive mixed model to explain the spatiotemporal dynamics of this disease and predict how it may be affected by climate change under various representative concentration pathways (RCPs) for three future time periods (the 2030s, 2050s, and 2080s). Our results demonstrate that temperature, precipitation, and relative humidity play key roles in driving the seasonal epidemic of scrub typhus in mainland China with a 2-month lag. Our findings show that the change of projected spatiotemporal dynamics of scrub typhus will be heterogeneous and will depend on specific combinations of regional climate conditions in future climate scenarios. Our results contribute to a better understanding of spatiotemporal dynamics of scrub typhus, which can help public health authorities refine their prevention and control measures to reduce the risks resulting from climate change.

climate change, impacts, public health, scrub typhus, spatiotemporal dynamic, vector-borne disease
1354-1013
6618-6628
Ding, Fangyu
8c84cb59-40c6-4efd-bfba-a80abf98797f
Wang, Qian
861a2596-d822-41fd-bd7b-4fcdc2f81d2e
Hao, Mengmeng
d448c2c7-0511-4850-9481-9e3ef1d93910
Maude, Richard James
60164429-fcbb-4cbd-be8e-8c5be0eb0c71
John Day, Nicholas Philip
8928e7b2-7643-44bb-b12b-b221e87220bf
Lai, Shengjie
b57a5fe8-cfb6-4fa7-b414-a98bb891b001
Chen, Shuai
c2c64531-53ca-42dc-835e-27a707e8a8e5
Fang, Liqun
b251d13f-2d99-4359-a2d8-34c52243876e
Ma, Tian
dc2a4bf3-9b73-48cc-857c-953e14273fbe
Zheng, Canjun
036fc2f3-9f4a-439c-9a68-b0f0bf0de6f8
Jiang, Dong
9079b256-aef4-467e-aa65-e66ca316e734
Ding, Fangyu
8c84cb59-40c6-4efd-bfba-a80abf98797f
Wang, Qian
861a2596-d822-41fd-bd7b-4fcdc2f81d2e
Hao, Mengmeng
d448c2c7-0511-4850-9481-9e3ef1d93910
Maude, Richard James
60164429-fcbb-4cbd-be8e-8c5be0eb0c71
John Day, Nicholas Philip
8928e7b2-7643-44bb-b12b-b221e87220bf
Lai, Shengjie
b57a5fe8-cfb6-4fa7-b414-a98bb891b001
Chen, Shuai
c2c64531-53ca-42dc-835e-27a707e8a8e5
Fang, Liqun
b251d13f-2d99-4359-a2d8-34c52243876e
Ma, Tian
dc2a4bf3-9b73-48cc-857c-953e14273fbe
Zheng, Canjun
036fc2f3-9f4a-439c-9a68-b0f0bf0de6f8
Jiang, Dong
9079b256-aef4-467e-aa65-e66ca316e734

Ding, Fangyu, Wang, Qian, Hao, Mengmeng, Maude, Richard James, John Day, Nicholas Philip, Lai, Shengjie, Chen, Shuai, Fang, Liqun, Ma, Tian, Zheng, Canjun and Jiang, Dong (2022) Climate drives the spatiotemporal dynamics of scrub typhus in China. Global Change Biology, 28 (22), 6618-6628. (doi:10.1111/gcb.16395).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Scrub typhus is a climate-sensitive and life-threatening vector-borne disease that poses a growing public health threat. Although the climate-epidemic associations of many vector-borne diseases have been studied for decades, the impacts of climate on scrub typhus remain poorly understood, especially in the context of global warming. Here we incorporate Chinese national surveillance data on scrub typhus from 2010 to 2019 into a climate-driven generalized additive mixed model to explain the spatiotemporal dynamics of this disease and predict how it may be affected by climate change under various representative concentration pathways (RCPs) for three future time periods (the 2030s, 2050s, and 2080s). Our results demonstrate that temperature, precipitation, and relative humidity play key roles in driving the seasonal epidemic of scrub typhus in mainland China with a 2-month lag. Our findings show that the change of projected spatiotemporal dynamics of scrub typhus will be heterogeneous and will depend on specific combinations of regional climate conditions in future climate scenarios. Our results contribute to a better understanding of spatiotemporal dynamics of scrub typhus, which can help public health authorities refine their prevention and control measures to reduce the risks resulting from climate change.

Text
Manuscript - Accepted Manuscript
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.
Download (6MB)
Text
Global Change Biology - 2022 - Ding - Climate drives the spatiotemporal dynamics of scrub typhus in China - Version of Record
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.
Download (19MB)

More information

Submitted date: 23 May 2022
Accepted/In Press date: 12 July 2022
e-pub ahead of print date: 2 September 2022
Published date: 2 September 2022
Additional Information: Funding Information: We sincerely thank Qiaoling Zhu, Zhongjie Li and Yushu Qian for providing valuable suggestions. This work was funded by the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant no. XDA19040305) and the Wellcome Trust (grant no. 220211). The funders of the study had no role in study design, data collection, data analysis, data interpretation, in preparing the paper or in our decision to publish. For the purpose of Open Access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright license to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission.
Keywords: climate change, impacts, public health, scrub typhus, spatiotemporal dynamic, vector-borne disease

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 470283
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/470283
ISSN: 1354-1013
PURE UUID: 22a96950-86e5-425c-8b29-8c7025435e75
ORCID for Shengjie Lai: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-9781-8148

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 05 Oct 2022 16:48
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 03:52

Export record

Altmetrics

Contributors

Author: Fangyu Ding
Author: Qian Wang
Author: Mengmeng Hao
Author: Richard James Maude
Author: Nicholas Philip John Day
Author: Shengjie Lai ORCID iD
Author: Shuai Chen
Author: Liqun Fang
Author: Tian Ma
Author: Canjun Zheng
Author: Dong Jiang

Download statistics

Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.

View more statistics

Atom RSS 1.0 RSS 2.0

Contact ePrints Soton: eprints@soton.ac.uk

ePrints Soton supports OAI 2.0 with a base URL of http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/cgi/oai2

This repository has been built using EPrints software, developed at the University of Southampton, but available to everyone to use.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue without changing your settings, we will assume that you are happy to receive cookies on the University of Southampton website.

×