A recent study on American robins showed that birds that were starved for two days prior to infection developed heavier viral loads and longer infections when challenged with West Nile virus. Scientists used modeling to show that even if a small proportion of birds went hungry then it could have large effects on the number of infected mosquitoes in an area.
A few years ago, this question would have been merely academic for most of the world, but now that we have all experienced the realities of emerging pathogens the answer is important from a very real and practical perspective. Arboviruses, such as those causing Zika and dengue, pose a significant threat as outbreak-causing emerging or reemerging pathogens, and any form of protection a population already has against them could only be beneficial in containing outbreaks. In their latest paper, Barbara Batista Salgado and colleagues look at the prevalence of antibodies to some of the common arboviruses in the Brazilian population.
Echinococcosis is an often fatal zoonotic disease caused by infection with the larval stage of tapeworms from the genus Echinococcus. These parasitic worms are found across much of the globe and are particularly prevalent in the northern hemisphere, such as Europe, Central and Eastern Asia, and North America.
A new study investigates the practicalities of using drones to identify Anopheles larval habitat in Malawi.