Study - Heatwaves, Higher Baseline Temperatures Can Drastically Change Outcomes Of Disease Outbreaks
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To understand how different aspects of high heat can modify the consequences of host-parasite interactions, McCartan and her colleagues infected water fleas with their parasites’ spores and altered the timing (before, during or after infection), magnitude (3 or 6 degrees Celsius above baseline temperature) and duration (short or long) of heat wave treatments across four baseline temperatures meant to reflect real-life conditions.
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In the new study, published in PLOS Climate, she simulated the effects of heat waves on disease dynamics using water fleas (Daphnia magna), invertebrates at the base of freshwater food webs, and their parasite (Ordospora colligata), which forms spore clusters when it invades the fleas’ guts. This pair is a go-to experimental model for studying how environmental shifts like climate change affect interactions between pathogens and their hosts.
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McCartan found that exposing fleas and their parasites to heat spikes delivered at lower baseline temperatures gave the parasites an advantage, increasing their numbers by nearly 2.5 times. But exposing the hosts and parasites to the most intense heat wave treatments, which started at the highest baseline temperature, resulted in a 13.5-fold decrease in parasite numbers.
“It’s a great article and I think it does have broader implications,” said Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development and a professor of pediatrics and molecular virology and microbiology. As the COVID pandemic took off, Hotez and his colleagues at Texas Children’s Hospital developed and licensed low-cost, patent-free COVID vaccine technology to vaccine producers for use in poorer countries, allowing more than 100 million people to receive a shot at minimal cost. The shots were deployed just in time. Recent research found that heat waves accelerate the spread of infectious diseases in people. Roughly 70 percent of global COVID-19 cases could have been avoided if there had been no heat waves in the summer of 2022, researchers reported in the journal Environmental Research.
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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04062025/extreme-weather-increases-risks-and-spread-of-infectious-disease/