United States: Climate change has taken the blame for a fifth of new dengue fever incidences – a viral disease transmitted by the Aedes mosquito.
According to estimation, failure to reduce global warming levels will cause the figure to go up to 60 percent in 2050. These estimates were derived from about 1.5 million dengue infections that occurred in 21 countries in Asia and the Americas between 1993 and 2019.
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The review involved only the countries of residence of the disease, which means that it constantly recurs in certain areas.
Having established a basic understanding of the virus, the researchers had to define factors that may influence the transmission rate, including increase in temperature, alterable rainfall, and population density.
They then applied statistical analysis to find out that of all these factors, the rise in temperatures was solely proximate to 19 percent of infections in dengue, livescience.com reported.
The scientists pointed out this is the first time climate change has been causally associated with the transmission of dengue.
Scientists have been debating over the prediction of how climate change may impact different mosquito-borne diseases for years, Mordecai, the co-author of the work and an associate professor of Biology at Stanford University, said Live Science.
What more are the experts stating?
From this, we understand that mosquitoes are cold-blooded; this is because they regulate their body temperature with the surrounding temperature.
Temperature influences the development and multiplication of mosquitoes, and the higher the temperatures, the quicker these insects grow and multiply, therefore increasing the number of pests able to bite humans and spread diseases.
In the new study, analysts concentrated on dengue since it has brief optimal temperatures, meaning that global warming shall favor the disease’s environment of transmission, experts revealed.
That works for settings where dengue already circulates and for those settings where it does not yet. Interestingly, the researchers observed that there is actually an ideal temperature for mosquitoes to infect humans with the dengue virus, livescience.com reported.
Dengue fever virus cannot replicate within mosquitoes at temperatures lower than 59 degrees Fahrenheit (15 degrees Celsius), for it can hardly be transmitted.