Potential for Hydroclimatically Driven Shifts in Infectious Disease Outbreaks: The Case of Tularemia in High-Latitude Regions
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Abstract:
Hydroclimatic changes may be particularly pronounced in high-latitude regions and can influence infectious diseases, jeopardizing regional human and animal health. In this study, we consider the example of tularemia, one of the most studied diseases in high-latitude regions, which is likely to be impacted by large regional hydroclimatic changes. For this disease case, we use a validated statistical model and develop a method for quantifying possible hydroclimatically driven shifts in outbreak conditions. The results show high sensitivity of tularemia outbreaks to certain combinations of hydroclimatic variable values. These values are within the range of past regional observations and may represent just mildly shifted conditions from current hydroclimatic averages. The methodology developed also facilitates relatively simple identification of possible critical hydroclimatic thresholds, beyond which unacceptable endemic disease levels may be reached. These results call for further research on how projected hydroclimatic changes may affect future outbreaks of tularemia and other infectious diseases in high-latitude and other world regions, with particular focus on critical thresholds to high-risk conditions. More research is also needed on the generality and spatiotemporal transferability of statistical disease models.Keywords:
Tularemia
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Tularemia
Francisella
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Tularemia is a zoonotic disease which, in Scandinavia, is usually acquired through a mosquito bite. As the infecting organism, Francisella tularensis, is highly virulent the culturing of F. tularensis has generally been avoided. PCR offers a safe way to rapidly confirm diagnosis of tularemia. The case of a 9-y-old boy with ulceroglandular tularemia is presented. The diagnosis was made rapidly with DNA amplification from a pus specimen. The efficacy of ciprofloxacin treatment of tularemia in children is also discussed.
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In June 2000, seven cases of tularemia were reported to the Oklahoma State Department of Health (OSDH) over an 18-day period. Enhanced tularemia surveillance by OSDH during July-September 2000 detected four additional cases. During 1995-1999, an average of six cases were reported each year. This report summarizes clinical and epidemiologic information from the investigation of the 11 cases, presents three case reports to illustrate different risk factors for tularemia, and underscores the danger of delayed diagnosis of tularemia and the risk for acquiring tularemia in laboratory settings. Physicians should consider tularemia in ill persons with fever who reside in or visit areas where the disease is endemic and who have been exposed to ticks or carcasses or tissue from rabbits or other animals.
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Norms are useful tools to regulate autonomous agents, and their generality is the focus of this paper. The generality of norms refers to the extent of behaviors the norms are capable of regulating. While very specific norms tend to be inefficient to avoid undesirable behaviors (since they are rarely activated), very general norms tend to limit excessively the options of the agents (since they are activated too often) hindering them to achieve the system goal. Therefore, a norm that efficiently regulates the agents should have a balanced generality, being neither too specific nor too general. Therefore, we consider that exploring the generality of norms is a fundamental key to obtaining efficient norms. However, the evaluation of their generality usually considers every behavior they regulate. Since it is likely an unfeasible task, in this paper, we investigate alternatives to estimate the norms generality from their syntactic characteristics. Based on these characteristics, we obtain different sequences of norms that vary, approximately, from the most specific to the most general. We assume thus that norms with a balanced generality are more easily found considering these orderings. Therefore, it is relevant to understand the impact of the syntactical characteristics in ordering the norms. In this context, we found out how different alternatives organize the norms space. This result is particularly useful for the development of algorithms for searching efficient norms that, through different strategies, may exploit how norms space is arranged and may be pruned.
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The data on the epidemiological and epizootological manifestations of tularemia on the territory of the Ulyanovsk region are presented. The characteristics describing the process of the of Francisella tularensis circulation as well as the environmental objects, most important for the manifestations of tularemia infection, are given.
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Evolution of a laboratory based system for investigating outbreaks of infectious intestinal disease.
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