Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
Parasit Vectors. 2011 Mar 15;4:35. doi: 10.1186/1756-3305-4-35.
The emergence of zoonoses is due both to changes in human activities and to changes in their natural wildlife cycles. One of the most significant vector-borne zoonoses in Europe, tick-borne encephalitis (TBE), doubled in incidence in 1993, largely as a consequence of the socio-economic transition from communism to capitalism and associated environmental changes.
To test the effect of the current economic recession, unemployment in 2009 and various socio-economic indices were compared to weather indices (derived from principal component analyses) as predictors for the change in TBE case numbers in 2009 relative to 2004-08, for 14 European countries.
Greatest increases in TBE incidence occurred in Latvia, Lithuania and Poland (91, 79 and 45%, respectively). The weather was rejected as an explanatory variable. Indicators of high background levels of poverty, e.g. percent of household expenditure on food, were significant predictors. The increase in unemployment in 2009 relative to 2008 together with 'in-work risk of poverty' is the only case in which a multivariate model has a second significant term.
Background socio-economic conditions determine susceptibility to risk of TBE, while increased unemployment triggered a sudden increase in risk. Mechanisms behind this result may include reduced resistance to infection through stress; reduced uptake of costly vaccination; and more exposure of people to infected ticks in their forest habitat as they make greater use of wild forest foods, especially in those countries, Lithuania and Poland, with major marketing opportunities in such products. Recognition of these risk factors could allow more effective protection through education and a vaccination programme targeted at the economically most vulnerable.
人畜共患病的出现既与人类活动的变化有关，也与野生动物自然周期的变化有关。在欧洲，蜱传脑炎（TBE）是最重要的虫媒传染病之一，其发病率在 1993 年翻了一番，这主要是由于从共产主义向资本主义过渡以及相关的环境变化所带来的社会经济转型的结果。
为了检验当前经济衰退的影响，将 2009 年的失业率与各种社会经济指数与天气指数（源自主成分分析）进行了比较，以预测 2009 年相对于 2004-08 年 14 个欧洲国家 TBE 病例数的变化。
TBE 发病率增加最多的国家是拉脱维亚、立陶宛和波兰（分别为 91%、79%和 45%）。天气被排除为解释变量。高贫困背景水平的指标，如家庭食品支出占比，是重要的预测指标。与 2008 年相比，2009 年失业率的增加以及“工作中贫困风险”是唯一出现多元模型具有第二个显著项的情况。
背景社会经济条件决定了 TBE 的易感性，而失业率的增加则触发了风险的突然增加。这一结果背后的机制可能包括通过压力降低感染抵抗力；减少对昂贵疫苗的接种；以及由于人们更多地使用野生森林食物，他们在森林栖息地中接触受感染的蜱的机会增加，尤其是在立陶宛和波兰等国家，这些国家在这些产品上有很大的市场机会。认识到这些风险因素可以通过教育和针对经济上最脆弱人群的疫苗接种计划来实现更有效的保护。
