Climate drives the spatiotemporal dynamics of scrub typhus in China
1
Issued Date
2022-11-01
Resource Type
ISSN
13541013
eISSN
13652486
Scopus ID
2-s2.0-85137372064
Pubmed ID
36056457
Journal Title
Global Change Biology
Volume
28
Issue
22
Start Page
6618
End Page
6628
Rights Holder(s)
SCOPUS
Bibliographic Citation
Global Change Biology Vol.28 No.22 (2022) , 6618-6628
Suggested Citation
Ding F., Wang Q., Hao M., Maude R.J., John Day N.P., Lai S., Chen S., Fang L., Ma T., Zheng C., Jiang D. Climate drives the spatiotemporal dynamics of scrub typhus in China. Global Change Biology Vol.28 No.22 (2022) , 6618-6628. 6628. doi:10.1111/gcb.16395 Retrieved from: https://repository.li.mahidol.ac.th/handle/123456789/84668
Title
Climate drives the spatiotemporal dynamics of scrub typhus in China
Author's Affiliation
Faculty of Tropical Medicine, Mahidol University
Academy of Military Medical Science China
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention
Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research Chinese Academy of Sciences
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences
University of Southampton
Nuffield Department of Medicine
Academy of Military Medical Science China
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention
Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research Chinese Academy of Sciences
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences
University of Southampton
Nuffield Department of Medicine
Other Contributor(s)
Abstract
Scrub typhus is a climate-sensitive and life-threatening vector-borne disease that poses a growing public health threat. Although the climate-epidemic associations of many vector-borne diseases have been studied for decades, the impacts of climate on scrub typhus remain poorly understood, especially in the context of global warming. Here we incorporate Chinese national surveillance data on scrub typhus from 2010 to 2019 into a climate-driven generalized additive mixed model to explain the spatiotemporal dynamics of this disease and predict how it may be affected by climate change under various representative concentration pathways (RCPs) for three future time periods (the 2030s, 2050s, and 2080s). Our results demonstrate that temperature, precipitation, and relative humidity play key roles in driving the seasonal epidemic of scrub typhus in mainland China with a 2-month lag. Our findings show that the change of projected spatiotemporal dynamics of scrub typhus will be heterogeneous and will depend on specific combinations of regional climate conditions in future climate scenarios. Our results contribute to a better understanding of spatiotemporal dynamics of scrub typhus, which can help public health authorities refine their prevention and control measures to reduce the risks resulting from climate change.