Abstract
Climate change has already impacted the transmission of a wide range of vector-borne diseases in Europe, and it will continue to do so in the coming decades. Climate change has been implicated in the observed shift of ticks to elevated altitudes and latitudes, notably including the Ixodes ricinus tick species that is a vector for Lyme borreliosis and tick-borne encephalitis. Climate change is also thought to have been a factor in the expansion of other important disease vectors in Europe: Aedes albopictus (the Asian tiger mosquito), which transmits diseases such as Zika, dengue and chikungunya, and Phlebotomus sandfly species, which transmits diseases including Leishmaniasis. In addition, highly elevated temperatures in the summer of 2010 have been associated with an epidemic of West Nile Fever in Southeast Europe and subsequent outbreaks have been linked to summer temperature anomalies. Future climate-sensitive health impacts are challenging to project quantitatively, in part due to the intricate interplay between non-climatic and climatic drivers, weather-sensitive pathogens and climate-change adaptation. Moreover, globalisation and international air travel contribute to pathogen and vector dispersion internationally. Nevertheless, monitoring forecasts of meteorological conditions can help detect epidemic precursors of vector-borne disease outbreaks and serve as early warning systems for risk reduction.
Highlights
The transmission of vector-borne diseases requires an introduced and/or established vector population, a pathogen and suitable environmental and climatic conditions across the full cycle of vector-borne disease transmission in humans (Randolph and Rogers 2010)
Climate change has been implicated in the observed shift of ticks to elevated altitudes and latitudes, notably including the Ixodes ricinus tick species that is a vector for Lyme borreliosis and tick-borne encephalitis
Climate change is thought to have been a factor in the expansion of other important disease vectors in Europe: Aedes albopictus, which transmits diseases such as Zika, dengue and chikungunya, and Phlebotomus sandfly species, which transmits diseases including Leishmaniasis
Summary
The transmission of vector-borne diseases requires an introduced and/or established vector population, a pathogen and suitable environmental and climatic conditions across the full cycle of vector-borne disease transmission in humans (Randolph and Rogers 2010). The latter affect everything from vector survival and abundance, pathogen growth and survival in host organisms and in vector organisms, vector activity and biting rates and human exposures to disease vectors. Climate change is the focus of this paper, it is important to stress that the introduction of exotic diseases and disease vectors in Europe is primarily facilitated by globalisation (Semenza et al 2016a). We summarise the state of knowledge relating to the observed and projected impacts of climate change on vector-borne disease transmission in Europe, focusing on tickborne, mosquito-borne and sandfly-borne diseases, before identifying paths forward for research and public health action
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