University of Sydney, Faculty of Medicine and Health, Marie Bashir Institute for Infectious Diseases and Biosecurity, Westmead, NSW, Australia.
University of Sydney, Faculty of Medicine and Health, Westmead Institute for Medical Research, Westmead, NSW, Australia.
Int J Epidemiol. 2019 Dec 1;48(6):1804-1814. doi: 10.1093/ije/dyz232.
Anthropogenic pressure in biodiversity hotspots is increasingly recognized as a major driver of the spillover and expansion of zoonotic disease. In the Western Ghats region of India, a devastating tick-borne zoonosis, Kyasanur Forest disease (KFD), has been expanding rapidly beyond its endemic range in recent decades. It has been suggested that anthropogenic pressure in the form of land use changes that lead to the loss of native forest may be directly contributing to the expanding range of KFD, but clear evidence has not yet established the association between forest loss and KFD risk.
The current study sought to investigate the relationship between KFD landscape suitability and both forest loss and mammalian species richness, to inform its epidemiology and infection ecology. A total of 47 outbreaks of KFD between 1 January 2012 and 30 June 2019 were modelled as an inhomogeneous Poisson process.
Both forest loss [relative risk (RR) = 1.83; 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.33-2.51] and mammalian species richness (RR = 1.29; 95% CI 1.16-1.42) were strongly associated with increased risk of KFD and dominated its landscape suitability.
These results provide the first evidence of a clear association between increasing forest loss and risk for KFD. Moreover, the findings also highlight the importance of forest loss in areas of high biodiversity. Therefore, this evidence provides strong support for integrative approaches to public health which incorporate conservation strategies simultaneously protective of humans, animals and the environment.
人们越来越认识到，生物多样性热点地区的人为压力是人畜共患病溢出和扩散的主要驱动因素。在印度西高止山脉地区，一种毁灭性的蜱传人畜共患病——卡雅山森林病（KFD），在过去几十年里迅速超出了其地方性流行范围。有人认为，导致原生森林丧失的土地利用变化等人为压力可能直接导致 KFD 流行范围的扩大，但目前还没有明确的证据证明森林丧失与 KFD 风险之间存在关联。
本研究旨在调查 KFD 景观适宜性与森林丧失和哺乳动物物种丰富度之间的关系，以了解其流行病学和感染生态学。共对 2012 年 1 月 1 日至 2019 年 6 月 30 日期间的 47 起 KFD 暴发进行了建模，作为非齐次泊松过程。
森林丧失[相对风险（RR）=1.83；95%置信区间（CI）1.33-2.51]和哺乳动物物种丰富度（RR=1.29；95%CI 1.16-1.42）均与 KFD 风险增加密切相关，并主导其景观适宜性。
这些结果首次提供了明确的证据，证明森林丧失的增加与 KFD 的风险之间存在明确的关联。此外，这些发现还强调了森林丧失在高生物多样性地区的重要性。因此，这一证据为整合公共卫生方法提供了强有力的支持，这些方法同时包含了保护人类、动物和环境的保护策略。
