Summary
Emerging Infectious Diseases (EID) have the potential to develop into pandemics, leading to high life losses and affecting the living standards and wellbeing of entire societies, as occurred during the COVID crisis.
The most likely origin of EID is wildlife, and the literature points to a range of factors that have the potential to drive the risk of emergence of new EID: land use change, agricultural expansion, biodiversity loss, wildlife trade and consumption, and climate change. There is no research, however, that would comprehensively assesses the importance and interactions between the drivers of EID in a consistent global framework.
APES project intends to address this knowledge gap and contribute to better understanding of pandemics risks by bringing together existing and newly available data sources, together with advanced statistical methods. The project results will inform policymaking on the factors and drivers affecting the emergence of EIDs.
Background
Diseases emerge in a process of human interaction with microbes and their reservoir host species. The most likely origins of EID are viruses occurring in mammals and water birds. As of today, less than 0.1% of 1.7 million of the viruses occurring in wildlife have been discovered and up to half of those viruses may have high potential to spillover to humans. EID outbreaks are also caused by bacteria, fungi, protozoans and other parasites, but with very limited probability of causing a pandemic.
Although there is no research that quantifies the importance and interactions between the EID drivers in a comprehensive global framework, existing studies provide some insight into the dynamics of the EID spillover. Current literature points to a range of factors that have potential to drive the risk of emergence of new viral pathogens from wildlife. Human-driven land use conversion is considered one of the most important drivers of zoonotic spillover and can include deforestation, agricultural intensification and urbanisation.
The literature is not conclusive about the specific role of biodiversity in pathogen transmission: while some evidence suggests that higher diversity often results in lower disease risk, other authors argue that the relationship is documented only for selected pathogens and not scalable across diseases and geography, and biodiversity will be more likely to increase rather than decrease infectious disease risk.
Climate change is identified as a potentially significant driver for the EID threats and also as augmenting factor on disease emergence since zoonotic pathogens are more sensitive to climate than non-zoonotic pathogens. The overall insights from quantitative analyses regarding the role of climate change remain inconclusive.
Potential cooperation
Please direct any interest in cooperating for this research to the project coordinator Wojtek Szewczyk (Wojciech [dot] SZEWCZYK
ec [dot] europa [dot] eu (Wojciech[dot]SZEWCZYK[at]ec[dot]europa[dot]eu)), or to the main investigators, Angela Fanelli (Angela [dot] FANELLIec [dot] europa [dot] eu (Angela[dot]FANELLI[at]ec[dot]europa[dot]eu)) or Emanuele Masaro (Emanuele [dot] MASSAROec [dot] europa [dot] eu (Emanuele[dot]MASSARO[at]ec[dot]europa[dot]eu)).
