Where is the next global health threat going to come from?

The new geographical concern in relation to the next global epidemic or pandemic has been sounded by the EcoHealth Alliance, which is based in New York. The health consortium examined mammals, the viruses they harbor and the means by which they could come into contact with people, to reach their conclusions. The EcoHealth Alliance is, according to its website: “a global environmental health nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting wildlife and public health from the emergence of disease.”

The researchers behind the new analysis express the hope that the insight will be used to prevent the next HIV, Ebola or flu. The highest priority goes to bats, since the mammals of the order Chiroptera carry more potential threats for spreading disease than any other mammals. Mammals are key vectors for infection; most scientists think that the Ebola outbreak began in bats, and the consensus is that HIV came from chimpanzees.

For the research, the group of scientists reviewed data pertaining to all of the 586 viruses known to infect 754 species of mammal. This dataset consisted of 188 zoonotic infections (a disease than can infect both humans and other mammals). This required big data number crunching. The big data science experiment showed there are 17 zoonotic infections in every species of bat and 10 in every species of primate and rodent.

This enabled the researchers to produce a series of maps for charting infection outbreaks and mammalian vectors. The map for bats is shown below:

Warmer colours highlight areas predicted to be of greatest value for discovering novel zoonotic viruses, via bats.

Nature / EcoHealth Alliance

And for primate:

Warmer colours highlight areas predicted to be of greatest value for discovering novel zoonotic viruses, in relation to primates.

Nature / EcoHealth Alliance

The headline figure is that the threat from rodents and bats is global, although there is a stark concentration in South America. Dr Kevin Olival, who was part of the research team, told the BBC: “The missing hotspots are different for different groups of mammals in different parts of the world, but the bat signal overwhelms some of the others.” The researchers argue for preventative resources to be oriented towards the global hotpots.

The output from the review has been published in the journal Nature, with the study titled “Host and viral traits predict zoonotic spillover from mammals.”