Researchers find humans have given wild animals their diseases nearly 100 times

Scientists at Georgetown University have found that humans may give viruses back to animals more often than previously thought.

In a study published March 22 in Ecology Letters, the authors describe nearly one hundred different cases where diseases have undergone "spillback" from humans back into the wild.

There has understandably been an enormous amount of interest in human-to-wild animal pathogen transmission in light of the Pandemic.

In their new study, Albery and colleagues found that almost half of the incidents they identified occurred in captive settings like zoos, where veterinarians are more likely to notice when a virus makes the jump. More than half of the cases they found were human-to-primate transmission, an unsurprising result because pathogens find it easier to jump between closely related hosts.

Anna Fagre says that this supports the idea that we are more likely to detect pathogens in the places we spend a lot of time and effort looking at, with a disproportionate number of studies focusing on charismatic animals at zoos or in close proximity to humans.

The spread of the disease spillback has recently attracted attention due to the fact that it causes the disease COVID-19 in wild white-tailed deer in the United States and Canada. Some data suggest that deer have given the virus back to humans in at least one case, and many scientists are concerned that new animal habitats might give the virus more chances to evolve new versions.

Albery and colleagues found that artificial intelligence can be used to anticipate which species might be at risk of contracting the virus. Scientists were able to guess more often than not when compared to predictions made earlier in the pandemic, when they compared species that have been exposed to the disease.

Colin Carlson is an assistant research professor in the Center for Global Health Science and Security at Georgetown University Medical Center and an author.

The new study is part of a project funded by the National Science Foundation. The Verena team uses data science and machine learning to study the science of the host-viruses network, a new field that aims to predict which viruses can cause disease in humans, which animals host them and when and why. If scientists want to understand how and why humans share their diseases with animals, those insights are critical.

The biggest problem is how little we know about wildlife diseases. Carlson says it is still difficult to assess risk in other cases where we are not able to operate with as much information. It is difficult to measure how severe a risk spillback poses for human health or wildlife.

Long-term monitoring helps establish baselines for wildlife health and disease prevalence, laying important groundwork for future studies.

More information: Assessing the risk of human-to-wildlife pathogen transmission for conservation and public health, Ecology Letters (2022). Journal information: Ecology Letters Citation: Researchers find humans have given wild animals their diseases nearly 100 times (2022, March 23) retrieved 23 March 2022 from https://phys.org/news/2022-03-humans-wild-animals-diseases.html This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.