A new study among researchers of several institutions suggests that internal climate variability can increase the spread of vector-borne diseases.<\/p>\n
What’s happening?<\/p>\n
The study, published in PNAS<\/a>, defines ICV as “natural fluctuations that occur [in our environment] irrespective of external factors.” External factors are things like an increase in polluting gases in our atmosphere.<\/p>\n News-Medical.Net<\/a> further explained that researchers often don’t consider ICV when studying vector-borne diseases. But it could be the reason why increased preparation and surveillance needs to happen in case of future outbreaks.<\/p>\n Why do we need to prepare for potential outbreaks?<\/p>\n ICV can exacerbate the effects of increased air pollution, which include rising global temperatures. All of these issues can increase the spread of vector-borne diseases and endanger our health.<\/p>\n We’re already seeing a rise in vector-borne diseases in places where they’ve never been seen before. News-Medical noted that Los Angeles and Paris saw dengue fever transmission for the first time in 2023. Mosquitoes that spread the dengue virus were also found in the U.K.<\/p>\n According to the Mayo Clinic<\/a>, symptoms of dengue fever usually start four to 10 days after a mosquito bites someone. While most people recover within a week, severe symptoms and cases can lead to death.<\/p>\n If action doesn’t happen soon, dengue may continue to creep into Europe and the U.S. It could also get even worse where it’s typically found: Southeast Asia, the western Pacific islands, Latin America, and Africa.<\/p>\n What’s being done about vector-borne diseases?<\/p>\n A vaccine<\/a> is currently available in U.S. territories and freely associated states where dengue is endemic, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.<\/p>\n Besides that, one of the best things you can do is prevent mosquito bites from happening in the first place. The Mayo Clinic<\/a> recommends actions like wearing protective clothing, using mosquito repellent, and reducing standing water where possible \u2014 or using mosquito dunks \u2014 to stop mosquitoes from reproducing nearby.<\/p>\n Places like San Diego County are taking swift action when cases do show up to prevent further spread as well.<\/p>\n Join our free newsletter<\/a> for good news and useful tips, and don’t miss this cool list<\/a> of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new study among researchers of several institutions suggests that internal climate variability can increase the spread of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28581,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[24686,163,85,46,1288,24826,24825],"class_list":{"0":"post-28580","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-dengue-fever","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-israel","12":"tag-mayo-clinic","13":"tag-natural-fluctuations","14":"tag-vector-borne-diseases"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}