Sun Zhe, Xu Lei, Schmid Boris V, Dean Katharine R, Zhang Zhibin, Xie Yan, Fang Xiye, Wang Shuchun, Liu Qiyong, Lyu Baolei, Wan Xinru, Xu Jianguo, Stenseth Nils Chr, Xu Bing
Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Earth System Modeling, Department of Earth System Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, People's Republic of China.
Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis (CEES), Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo, N-0316 Oslo, Norway.
R Soc Open Sci. 2019 Jun 19;6(6):190216. doi: 10.1098/rsos.190216. eCollection 2019 Jun.
Plague remains a threat to public health and is considered as a re-emerging infectious disease today. Rodents play an important role as major hosts in plague persistence and driving plague outbreaks in natural foci; however, few studies have tested the association between host diversity in ecosystems and human plague risk. Here we use zero-inflated generalized additive models to examine the association of species richness with human plague presence (where plague outbreaks could occur) and intensity (the average number of annual human cases when they occurred) in China during the Third Pandemic. We also account for transportation network density, annual precipitation levels and human population size. We found rodent species richness, particularly of rodent plague hosts, is positively associated with the presence of human plague. Further investigation shows that species richness of both wild and commensal rodent plague hosts are positively correlated with the presence, but only the latter correlated with the intensity. Our results indicated a positive relationship between rodent diversity and human plague, which may provide suggestions for the plague surveillance system.
鼠疫仍然对公共卫生构成威胁，如今被视为一种再度出现的传染病。啮齿动物作为鼠疫在自然疫源地持续存在及引发鼠疫暴发的主要宿主，发挥着重要作用；然而，很少有研究检验生态系统中宿主多样性与人类鼠疫风险之间的关联。在此，我们使用零膨胀广义相加模型，来研究物种丰富度与第三次鼠疫大流行期间中国人类鼠疫存在情况（可能发生鼠疫暴发的地方）及强度（发生时每年人类病例的平均数量）之间的关联。我们还考虑了交通网络密度、年降水量水平和人口规模。我们发现啮齿动物物种丰富度，尤其是啮齿动物鼠疫宿主的丰富度，与人类鼠疫的存在呈正相关。进一步调查表明，野生和共生啮齿动物鼠疫宿主的物种丰富度均与人类鼠疫的存在呈正相关，但只有后者与强度相关。我们的结果表明啮齿动物多样性与人类鼠疫之间存在正相关关系，这可能为鼠疫监测系统提供建议。
