Emerging Urban Vector-Borne Disease: West Nile Virus in New York City (1999-2006)

城市环境中的病媒传播疾病是发展中国家的一个重大公共卫生问题。1999年在纽约市爆发的西尼罗河病毒（WNV）表明，即使是富裕的社会也不是对新出现的疾病不可战胜的。预计全球气候变化将加剧这一问题。虽然有一个伟大的机构的知识，生物学的病媒传播疾病（包括西尼罗河病毒）和传播动态在农村和半农村景观，城市生态学的这种疾病是知之甚少。特别缺乏的是对建筑环境如何直接和间接影响传播，传播和演变以及人为影响下的城市环境如何影响疾病动态的全面了解。本研究将探讨三个假设：1。建筑环境中的空间变化导致了传染病的扩散，而不是经典流行病模型中的波浪式扩散.季节性温度波动和降水的随机变化与动力学感染过程的相互作用解释了年爆发的模式。对人类无毒的进化是鸟类无毒进化和/或蚊子适应的副产品。每个假设将通过理论模型来解决，该模型适合1999年至2006年纽约市西尼罗河病毒爆发的数据。结果将确定建筑环境的生态与近1000万纽约人的公共健康之间的联系。理论疾病生态学将通过关注季节性强迫，城市环境中的传播和多媒介多宿主病原体的循环来推进。通过将这一疾病系统作为一个模型来理解，将产生关于新出现的城市病媒传播疾病的新知识。研究人员将与纽约卫生和心理卫生部的公共卫生官员密切合作，制定建议和基于生态的风险地图，这将有助于控制纽约市的西尼罗河病毒。该研究还将包括两名本科生，一名研究生和一名博士后研究员的培训。

Vector-borne diseases in urban environments are a major public health issue in the developing world. The outbreak of West Nile virus (WNV) in New York City (NYC) in 1999 revealed that even affluent societies are not invincible to emerging diseases. Global climate change is predicted to exacerbate this problem. Although there is a great body of knowledge about the biology of vector-borne diseases (including WNV) and transmission dynamics in rural and semi-rural landscapes, the urban ecology of such diseases is poorly understood. Particularly lacking is a comprehensive understanding of how the built environment directly and indirectly affects transmission, spread, and evolution and how urban environments under anthropogenic influence affect disease dynamics. This study will explore three hypotheses:1. Spatial variation in the built environment leads to percolation-like spread rather than wave-like spread of classical epidemic models.2. The pattern of annual outbreaks is explained by the interaction of seasonal temperature fluctuations and random variation in precipitation interacting with a dynamical infection process.3. Evolution toward avirulence to humans is a byproduct of evolution toward avirulence in birds and/or adaptation in mosquitoes.Each hypothesis will be addressed by theoretical models fit to data on WNV outbreaks in NYC between 1999 and 2006. Results will identify links between the ecology of the built environment and the public health of nearly ten million New Yorkers. Theoretical disease ecology will be advanced by focusing on seasonal forcing, transmission in urban environments, and circulation of multi-vector multi-host pathogens. New knowledge of emerging urban vector-borne diseases will be produced by developing an understanding of this disease system as a model. The researchers will work closely with public health officers in the New York Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to develop recommendations and ecologically-based risk maps that will be useful for controlling WNV in NYC. The research also will include training of two undergraduate students, one graduate student, and one postdoctoral researcher.