Infection and Drug Resistance (Dec 2021)
Climate Change and Infections on the Move in North America
Abstract
Naomi Hauser,1,2 Kathryn C Conlon,2– 4 Angel Desai,1 Leda N Kobziar5 1Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Disease, University of California Davis Health, Sacramento, CA, USA; 2Climate Adaptation Research Center, University of California, Davis, CA, USA; 3Department of Public Health Sciences, School of Medicine, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA; 4Department of Veterinary Medicine & Epidemiology, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA; 5Department of Natural Resources and Society, University of Idaho, Coeur d’Alene, ID, USACorrespondence: Naomi HauserDepartment of Medicine, Division of Infectious Disease, University of California Davis Health, 4150 V St, PSSB G500, Sacramento, CA, 95817, USATel +1 916-734-8516Fax +1 916-734-7766Email [email protected]: Climate change is increasingly recognized for its impacts on human health, including how biotic and abiotic factors are driving shifts in infectious disease. Changes in ecological conditions and processes due to temperature and precipitation fluctuations and intensified disturbance regimes are affecting infectious pathogen transmission, habitat, hosts, and the characteristics of pathogens themselves. Understanding the relationships between climate change and infectious diseases can help clinicians broaden the scope of differential diagnoses when interviewing, diagnosing, and treating patients presenting with infections lacking obvious agents or transmission pathways. Here, we highlight key examples of how the mechanisms of climate change affect infectious diseases associated with water, fire, land, insects, and human transmission pathways in the hope of expanding the analytical framework for infectious disease diagnoses. Increased awareness of these relationships can help prepare both clinical physicians and epidemiologists for continued impacts of climate change on infectious disease in the future.Keywords: climate change, global warming, infectious disease, environment, antimicrobial resistance
