Background: West Nile virus infection in humans in urban areas of the Midwestern United States has exhibited strong spatial clustering during epidemic years. We derived urban landscape classes from the physical and socio-economic factors hypothesized to be associated with West Nile Virus (WNV) transmission and compared those to human cases of illness in 2002 in Chicago and Detroit. The objectives were to improve understanding of human exposure to virus-infected mosquitoes in the urban context, and to assess the degree to which environmental factors found to be important in Chicago were also found in Detroit.
Results: Five urban classes that partitioned the urban space were developed for each city region. The classes had many similarities in the two settings. In both regions, the WNV case rate was considerably higher in the urban class associated with the Inner Suburbs, where 1940-1960 era housing dominates, vegetation cover is moderate, and population density is moderate. The land cover mapping approach played an important role in the successful and consistent classification of the urban areas.
Conclusion: The analysis demonstrates how urban form and past land use decisions can influence transmission of a vector-borne virus. In addition, the results are helpful to develop hypotheses regarding urban landscape features and WNV transmission, they provide a structured method to stratify the urban areas to locate representative field study sites specifically for WNV, and this analysis contributes to the question of how the urban environment affects human health.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1476-072X-6-10 | DOI Listing |
Cureus
December 2024
Internal Medicine, Merit Health Wesley, Hattiesburg, USA.
This case report highlights the complex clinical presentation of a 43-year-old male with a history of renal transplantation, hypertension, and diabetes mellitus, who developed viral meningitis with probable metabolic encephalopathy. The multidisciplinary approach involved infectious disease specialists, transplant nephrologists, and neurologists. This case provides unique learning points such as highlighting the complexities of diagnosing and managing viral meningitis in an immunocompromised post-transplant patient, emphasizing the importance of a multidisciplinary approach, innovative medication delivery, and awareness for complications such as metabolic encephalopathy and persistent fevers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFParasit Vectors
January 2025
Centre for Snakebite Research and Interventions, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Liverpool, UK.
Mosquitoes are responsible for the transmission of numerous pathogens, including Plasmodium parasites, arboviruses and filarial worms. They pose a significant risk to public health with over 200 million cases of malaria per annum and approximately 4 billion people at risk of arthropod-borne viruses (arboviruses). Mosquito populations are geographically expanding into temperate regions and their distribution is predicted to continue increasing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBMC Infect Dis
January 2025
Department of Family Medicine, Epidemiology & Community Health, School of Health Sciences, Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya.
Background: HIV and HBV remain significant public health challenges characterized by high prevalence, morbidity, and mortality, especially among women of reproductive age in Uganda. Patients with HBV do not receive routine counselling and education, and there are limited resources for laboratory investigation coupled with a high loss to follow-up. This study set out to assess barriers and facilitators of integrated viral hepatitis B C and HIV care model to optimize screening uptake among mothers and newborns at health facilities in Koboko District, west Nile sub-region, Uganda.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSci Rep
January 2025
Rashpetco Company, Cairo, Egypt.
This study presents a comprehensive workflow to detect low seismic amplitude gas fields in hydrocarbon exploration projects, focusing on the West Delta Deep Marine (WDDM) concession, offshore Egypt. The workflow integrates seismic spectral decomposition and machine learning algorithms to identify subtle anomalies, including low seismic amplitude gas sand and background amplitude water sand. Spectral decomposition helps delineate the fairway boundaries and structural features, while Amplitude Versus Offset (AVO) analysis is used to validate gas sand anomalies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPLoS Pathog
January 2025
Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Pathology, College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA.
The mosquito midgut functions as a key interface between pathogen and vector. However, studies of midgut physiology and virus infection dynamics are scarce, and in Culex tarsalis-an extremely efficient vector of West Nile virus (WNV)-nonexistent. We performed single-cell RNA sequencing on Cx.
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