( A visiting biologist at the University ...)Pattern of human Ebola outbreaks linked to wildlife and climate

A visiting biologist at the University of California, San Diego and her colleagues in Africa and Britain have shown that there are close linkages between outbreaks of Ebola hemorrhagic fever in human and wildlife populations, and that climate may influence the spread of the disease.

The decade-long study, published this month (with a cover date of January) in the journal Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, tracked animal disease outbreaks and human exposure to the Ebola virus in Gabon and adjoining northwestern Republic of the Congo (RoC). The researchers found that many additional wildlife and human populations within and outside of known epidemic zones have been exposed to the virus. When they considered disease outbreaks in all mammals, not just humans, the spread of Ebola no longer seemed erratic and inexplicable.

"Some researchers have hypothesized that outbreaks of Ebola are randomly-spaced periodic outbursts, while others have suggested that Ebola has spread like a wave surging over the Central African landscape," said Sally Lahm, a visiting scholar in UCSD's Division of Biological Sciences and the primary investigator of the study. "Our results are intermediate between these two views. There is a perceived pattern to the way the virus spreads, but it is not simply a wave affecting everything in its path, since apparently healthy mammal communities thrived in close proximity to Ebola epidemic sites."

Lahm has been a research associate at the Institute for Research in Tropical Ecology in Makokou, Gabon since 1982. She was conducting unrelated ecological studies when outbreaks of Ebola virus in humans prompted her to explore how the disease was affecting animal populations in the region. Between 1994 and 2003, she collected reports of animal illness and deaths from wildlife survey teams, villagers, hunters, fishers, loggers, miners, Ebola survivors and families of victims from across Gabon and i
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Source:University of California - San Diego

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