Climate change could spark the next pandemic, new study finds

Date:
April 28, 2022
Source:
Georgetown University Medical Center
Summary:
As Earth's climate continues to warm, researchers predict wild
animals will be forced to relocate their habitats -- likely to
regions with large human populations -- dramatically increasing the
risk of a viral jump to humans that could lead to the next pandemic.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
As Earth's climate continues to warm, researchers predict wild animals
will be forced to relocate their habitats -- likely to regions with
large human populations -- dramatically increasing the risk of a viral
jump to humans that could lead to the next pandemic.


==========================================================================
This link between climate change and viral transmission is described by
an international research team led by scientists at Georgetown University
and is published April 28 in Nature.

In their study, the scientists conducted the first comprehensive
assessment of how climate change will restructure the global mammalian
virome. The work focuses on geographic range shifts -- the journeys that species will undertake as they follow their habitats into new areas. As
they encounter other mammals for the first time, the study projects they
will share thousands of viruses.

They say these shifts bring greater opportunities for viruses like Ebola
or coronaviruses to emerge in new areas, making them harder to track,
and into new types of animals, making it easier for viruses to jump
across a "stepping stone" species into humans.

"The closest analogy is actually the risks we see in the wildlife trade,"
says the study's lead author Colin Carlson, PhD, an assistant research professor at the Center for Global Health Science and Security at
Georgetown University Medical Center. "We worry about markets because
bringing unhealthy animals together in unnatural combinations creates opportunities for this stepwise process of emergence -- like how SARS
jumped from bats to civets, then civets to people. But markets aren't
special anymore; in a changing climate, that kind of process will be the reality in nature just about everywhere." Of concern is that animal
habitats will move disproportionately in the same places as human
settlements, creating new hotspots of spillover risk. Much of this
process may already be underway in today's 1.2 degrees warmer world,
and efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions may not stop these events
from unfolding.



==========================================================================
An additional important finding is the impact rising temperatures will
have on bats, which account for the majority of novel viral sharing. Their ability to fly will allow them to travel long distances, and share the
most viruses.

Because of their central role in viral emergence, the greatest impacts
are projected in southeast Asia, a global hotspot of bat diversity.

"At every step," said Carlson, "our simulations have taken us by surprise.

We've spent years double-checking those results, with different data
and different assumptions, but the models always lead us to these
conclusions. It's a really stunning example of just how well we can,
actually, predict the future if we try." As viruses start to jump
between host species at unprecedented rates, the authors say that the
impacts on conservation and human health could be stunning.

"This mechanism adds yet another layer to how climate change will threaten human and animal health," says the study's co-lead author Gregory Albery,
PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biology in the Georgetown University College of Arts and Sciences.

"It's unclear exactly how these new viruses might affect the species
involved, but it's likely that many of them will translate to new
conservation risks and fuel the emergence of novel outbreaks in humans." Altogether, the study suggests that climate change will become the biggest upstream risk factor for disease emergence -- exceeding higher-profile
issues like deforestation, wildlife trade, and industrial agriculture. The authors say the solution is to pair wildlife disease surveillance with real-time studies of environmental change.



========================================================================== "When a Brazilian free-tailed bat makes it all the way to Appalachia,
we should be invested in knowing what viruses are tagging along," says
Carlson. "Trying to spot these host jumps in real-time is the only way
we'll be able to prevent this process from leading to more spillovers
and more pandemics." "We're closer to predicting and preventing the
next pandemic than ever," says Carlson. "This is a big step towards
prediction -- now we have to start working on the harder half of the
problem." "The COVID-19 pandemic, and the previous spread of SARS,
Ebola, and Zika, show how a virus jumping from animals to humans can
have massive effects. To predict their jump to humans, we need to know
about their spread among other animals," said Sam Scheiner, a program
director with the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), which funded the research. "This research shows how animal movements and interactions due
to a warming climate might increase the number of viruses jumping between species." Additional study authors also included collaborators from
the University of Connecticut (Cory Merow), Pacific Lutheran University
(Evan Eskew), the University of Cape Town (Christopher Trisos), and the EcoHealth Alliance (Noam Ross, Kevin Olival).

The authors report having no personal financial interests related to
the study.

The research described is supported in part by a National Science
Foundation (NSF) Biology Integration Institutes (BII) grant (BII
2021909), to the Viral Emergence Research Initiative (Verena). Verena, co-founded by Carlson and Albery, curates the largest ecosystem of open
data in viral ecology, and builds tools to help predict which viruses
could infect humans, which animals host them, and where they could
someday emerge. NSF BII grants support diverse and collaborative teams
of researchers investigating questions that span multiple disciplines
within and beyond biology.

Addition funding was provided by the NSF grant DBI-1639145, the USAID
Emerging Pandemic Threats PREDICT program, the Institut de Valorisation
des Donne'es, the National Socio-environmental Synthesis Center, and
the Georgetown Environment Initiative.


========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by
Georgetown_University_Medical_Center. Note: Content may be edited for
style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Colin J. Carlson, Gregory F. Albery, Cory Merow, Christopher
H. Trisos,
Casey M. Zipfel, Evan A. Eskew, Kevin J. Olival, Noam Ross,
Shweta Bansal. Climate change increases cross-species viral
transmission risk.

Nature, 2022; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04788-w ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/04/220428085820.htm

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