Appl Environ Microbiol
August 2025
comprise ecologically significant bacteria that thrive in warm, moderately saline water, and their incidence and proliferation are strongly influenced by environmental factors. In recent years, . infections have been reported more frequently and over a greater geographical area along the US eastern seaboard.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProc Natl Acad Sci U S A
August 2025
Climate change significantly impacts the incidence and abundance of microorganisms, including those essential for environmental cycles and those pathogenic to humans and animals. Shifts in conditions favorable for microbial growth have expanded the geographic range of many pathogens, contributing to the emergence and reemergence of infectious diseases. Waterborne diseases pose severe risks in regions where adverse climate conditions intersect with population vulnerabilities, especially inadequate water, sanitation, and hygiene infrastructure.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCorrelation of climate and infectious disease has been noted for millennia and recorded in the writings of Hippocrates. Given recent technological advances in both pathogen detection and monitoring of infectious diseases in a time of climate change, a detailed study of their link is now possible. In the aquatic environment, climate change has had an impact on ocean, estuary, and freshwater ecosystems that coincides with increased frequency of waterborne disease outbreaks.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProliferation of spp. in aquatic ecosystems is associated with climate change and, concomitantly, increased incidence of vibriosis. They are autochthonous to aquatic environments globally, but traditional metagenomic methods for detecting and typing pathogenic spp.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAims: The present study analyzed long-term trends in Vibrio spp. virulence factors associated with pathogenicity in Chesapeake Bay waters (in Maryland) across two 3-year sampling periods (2009-2012 and 2019-2022).
Methods And Results: Vibrio parahaemolyticus (n = 1476) and V.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
May 2025
Climate change is significantly impacting the geographic range of many animal species and their associated microorganisms, hence influencing emergence of vector-borne diseases. Mosquito-borne viruses represent a potential major reservoir of human pathogens, highlighting the need for improved understanding of ecological factors associated with variation in the mosquito viral community (virome). Here, a subtractive hybridization method coupled with RNAseq of individual mosquito specimens was used to profile RNA viromes of individual co-occurring and mosquitoes across a 2,000 km spatial scale.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Increasing aridity and incidence of droughts pose a significant threat to human health, primarily in exacerbating water scarcity, and is projected to become more frequent and severe as a result of related environmental changes in many regions globally. Concomitantly, water scarcity will force populations to utilize potentially contaminated water sources, hence increasing exposure to waterborne diseases, notably cholera. Proliferation of Vibrio cholerae, causative agent of cholera, is driven by environmental factors.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFClimate change is having increasingly profound effects on human health, notably those associated with the occurrence, distribution, and transmission of infectious diseases. The number of disparate ecological parameters and pathogens affected by climate change are vast and expansive. Disentangling the complex relationship between these variables is critical for the development of effective countermeasures against its effects.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe incidence of vibriosis is rising globally with evidence of climate variability influencing environmental processes that support growth of pathogenic . The waterborne pathogen, can invade wounds and has one of the highest case fatality rates in humans. The bacterium cannot be eradicated from the aquatic environment, hence climate driven environmental conditions enhancing growth and dissemination of .
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAppl Environ Microbiol
June 2024
Antibiotics are often used to treat severe infections, with third-generation cephalosporins and tetracyclines combined or fluoroquinolones alone being recommended by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Increases in antibiotic resistance of both environmental and clinical vibrios are of concern; however, limited longitudinal data have been generated among environmental isolates to inform how resistance patterns may be changing over time. Hence, we evaluated long-term trends in antibiotic resistance of vibrios isolated from Chesapeake Bay waters (Maryland) across two 3-year sampling periods (2009-2012 and 2019-2022).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCurrent modeling practices for environmental and sociological modulated infectious diseases remain inadequate to forecast the risk of outbreak(s) in human populations, partly due to a lack of integration of disciplinary knowledge, limited availability of disease surveillance datasets, and overreliance on compartmental epidemiological modeling methods. Harvesting data knowledge from virus transmission (aerosols) and detection (wastewater) of SARS-CoV-2, a heuristic score-based environmental predictive intelligence system was developed that calculates the risk of COVID-19 in the human population. Seasonal validation of the algorithm was uniquely associated with wastewater surveillance of the virus, providing a lead time of 7-14 days before a county-level outbreak.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFClimate change raises an old disease to a new level of public health threat. The causative agent, , native to aquatic ecosystems, is influenced by climate and weather processes. The risk of cholera is elevated in vulnerable populations lacking access to safe water and sanitation infrastructure.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEvidence suggests warming temperatures are associated with the spread of potentially pathogenic spp. and the emergence of human disease globally. Following Hurricane Ian, the State of Florida reported a sharp increase in the number of reported spp.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMembers of the genus are ecologically significant bacteria native to aquatic ecosystems globally, and a few can cause diseases in humans. Vibrio-related illnesses have increased in recent years, primarily attributed to changing environmental conditions. Therefore, understanding the role of environmental factors in the occurrence and growth of pathogenic strains is crucial for public health.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAppl Environ Microbiol
June 2023
Incidence of vibriosis is rising globally, with evidence that changing climatic conditions are influencing environmental factors that enhance growth of pathogenic spp. in aquatic ecosystems. To determine the impact of environmental factors on occurrence of pathogenic spp.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe study of human microbiomes has yielded insights into basic science, and applied therapeutics are emerging. However, conflicting definitions of what microbiomes are and how they affect the health of the "host" are less understood. A major impediment towards systematic design, discovery, and implementation of targeted microbiome therapeutics is the continued reliance on taxonomic indicators to define microbiomes in health and disease.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCholera remains a global public health threat in regions where social vulnerabilities intersect with climate and weather processes that impact infectious Vibrio cholerae. While access to safe drinking water and sanitation facilities limit cholera outbreaks, sheer cost of building such infrastructure limits the ability to safeguard the population. Here, using Yemen as an example where cholera outbreak was reported in 2016, we show how predictive abilities for forecasting risk, employing sociodemographical, microbiological, and climate information of cholera, can aid in combating disease outbreak.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Human norovirus (HuNoV) is the leading viral cause of diarrhea, with GII.4 as the predominant genotype of HuNoV outbreaks globally. However, new genogroup variants emerge periodically, complicating the development of anti-HuNoV vaccines; other prophylactic or therapeutic medications specifically for HuNoV disease are lacking.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPeriodical cicadas (Hemiptera: Magicicada) have coevolved with obligate bacteriome-inhabiting microbial symbionts, yet little is known about gut microbial symbiont composition or differences in composition among allochronic Magicicada broods (year classes) which emerge parapatrically or allopatrically in the eastern United States. Here, 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing was performed to determine gut bacterial community profiles of three periodical broods, including II (Connecticut and Virginia, 2013), VI (North Carolina, 2017), and X (Maryland, 2021, and an early emerging nymph collected in Ohio, 2017). Results showed similarities among all nymphal gut microbiomes and between morphologically distinct 17-year Magicicada, namely Magicicada septendecim (Broods II and VI) and 17-year Magicicada cassini (Brood X) providing evidence of a core microbiome, distinct from the microbiome of burrow soil inhabited by the nymphs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCholera, an ancient waterborne diarrheal disease, remains a threat to public health, especially when climate/weather processes, microbiological parameters, and sociological determinants intersect with population vulnerabilities of loss of access to safe drinking water and sanitation infrastructure. The ongoing war in Ukraine has either damaged or severely crippled civil infrastructure, following which the human population is at risk of health disasters. This editorial highlights a perspective on using predictive intelligence to combat potential (and perhaps impending) cholera outbreaks in various regions of Ukraine.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWastewater surveillance (WS), when coupled with advanced molecular techniques, offers near real-time monitoring of community-wide transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and allows assessing and mitigating COVID-19 outbreaks, by evaluating the total microbial assemblage in a community. Composite wastewater samples (24 h) were collected weekly from a manhole between December 2020 and November 2021 in Maryland, USA. RT-qPCR results showed concentrations of SARS-CoV-2 RNA recovered from wastewater samples reflected incidence of COVID-19 cases.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTrop Med Infect Dis
August 2021
Climate variables influence the occurrence, growth, and distribution of in the aquatic environment. Together with socio-economic factors, these variables affect the incidence and intensity of cholera outbreaks. The current pandemic of cholera began in the 1960s, and millions of cholera cases are reported each year globally.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEnviron Microbiol
December 2021
Vibrio spp. thrive in warm water and moderate salinity, and they are associated with aquatic invertebrates, notably crustaceans and zooplankton. At least 12 Vibrio spp.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMicrobial contamination of recreation waters is a major concern globally, with pollutants originating from many sources, including human and other animal wastes often introduced during storm events. Fecal contamination is traditionally monitored by employing culture methods targeting fecal indicator bacteria (FIB), namely . and enterococci, which provides only limited information of a few microbial taxa and no information on their sources.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF