New Delhi, 4 October (IANS). According to a study, mosquito -borne disease is unpredictable size and severity of chikungunya outbreak.
Common viruses in tropical and subtropical regions including Asia, Africa and South America cause symptoms such as acute fever, followed by joint pain that may last for months.
Although Chikungunya virus is rarely fatal, it can be particularly severe for high-risk individuals, including newborns and old people.
In a new study published in Science Advances, researchers at the University of Notre Dame, USA analyzed over 80 outbreaks of Chikungunya virus for forecast of outbreak and vaccine trial development.
Alex Perkins, professor of infectious disease epidemiology in the Department of Biological Sciences, said, “Chikungunya’s outbreaks are unexpected in both size and severity.”
Perkins further said, “One outbreak can infect a few people, and the other outbreak can infect thousands of people in the same way. This unpredictability makes public health plan and vaccine development so difficult.”
For the study, the team renovated 86 chikungunya outbreaks and analyzed the largest comparative dataset of its kind.
Chikungunya was first identified in the 1950s. Its outbreaks are becoming continuously and wider, but they are also irregular and it is difficult to forecast them, causing a challenge for public health authorities to plan and stop infection.
Aedes aept or Aedes albopicts are the main carriers of chikungunya. Perkins said that the study showed that climate is not an important factor in estimating the severity of the outbreak of a virus like Chikungunya.
He said, “Climate factors like temperature and rainfall can tell us where outbreaks are likely, but this study shows that these factors are not very helpful in estimating how serious the outbreak will be.” The expert further said, “Local conditions matters – as where you live, what is the number of mosquitoes and how the community is living. Some changes are only coincidentally and these irregularities are also a part of the story.”
-IANS
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