Geodemography, environment and societal characteristics drive the global diversity of emerging, zoonotic and human pathogens

Understanding human disease, zoonoses and emergence is a global priority. A deep understanding of pathogen ecology and the complex inherent relationships at the agent–environment interface are essential to inform disease control and mitigation and to predict the next zoonotic pandemic. Here, we present the first analysis of social and environmental factors associated with human, zoonotic and emerging pathogen diversity at a global scale, controlling for research effort. Predictor–response associations were captured by generalized additive models. We used national level data to aid in policy development to inform control and mitigation. We show that human population density, land area, temperature and the human development index at the country level are associated with human, emerging and zoonotic pathogen diversity. Multiple models demonstrating society–agent–environment interactions demonstrate that social, environmental and geographical factors predict global pathogen diversity. The analyses demonstrate that weather variables (temperature and rainfall) have the potential to influence pathogen diversity

Cost-benefit analysis of intervention policies for prevention and control of brucellosis in India

Background: Brucellosis is endemic in the bovine population in India and causes a loss of US$3·4 billion to the livestock industry besides having a significant human health impact. Methods: We developed a stochastic simulation model to estimate the impact of three alternative vaccination strategies on the prevalence of Brucella infection in the bovine populations in India for the next two decades: (a) annual mass vaccination only for the replacement calves and (b) vaccination of both the adult and young population at the beginning of the program followed by an annual vaccination of the replacement calves and, (c) annual mass vaccination of replacements for a decade followed by a decade of a test and slaughter strategy. Findings: For all interventions, our results indicate that the prevalence of Brucella infection will drop below 2$ 4·16 billion for intervention (a), US $8·31 billion for intervention (b) and, US$ 4·26 for intervention (c). For buffalo, the corresponding NPVs were US $8·77 billion, US$ 13·42 and, US $ 7·66, respectively. The benefit cost ratio (BCR) for the first, second and the third intervention for cattle were 7·98, 10·62 and, 3·16, respectively. Corresponding BCR estimates for buffalo were 17·81, 21·27 and, 3·79, respectively. Conclusion: These results suggest that all interventions will be cost-effective with the intervention (b), i.e. the vaccination of replacements with mass vaccination at the beginning of the program, being the most cost-effective choice. Further, sensitivity analysis revealed that all interventions will be cost-effective even at the 50% of the current prevalence estimates. The results advocate for the implementation of a disease control program for brucellosis in India. © 2018 Singh et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

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Current incidence, treatment costs and seasonality of pinkeye in Australian cattle estimated from sales of three popular medications

Pinkeye is an economically important ocular disease occurring in all cattle producing areas of Australia. This study was undertaken to estimate the frequency of occurrence of the disease in Australia and treatment costs of the disease to the cattle industry using the sales of popular pinkeye medications as a surrogate indicator. Monthly sales data for Orbenin® Eye Ointment, Opticlox® Eye Ointment and Terramycin® Pinkeye Aerosol were analysed. We first estimated the number of cattle that can be treated with a syringe or a can and then using the data of sales of these pinkeye medications and the total cattle population of Australia, estimated the incidence of pinkeye. Probability distributions were used to include uncertainty around the estimates. Costs to producers were estimated based on retail prices of these medications. The results indicated that 732,864 syringes of Orbenin® Eye Ointment, 134,800 syringes of Opticlox® Eye Ointment and 27,755 cans of Terramycin® Pinkeye Aerosol are sold in Australia per year. Based on some assumptions of the number of cases treated by these drugs and number of cases left untreated, the number of cattle affected by pinkeye each year in Australia was estimated to be 2.80 million (95 % PI: 1.76, 4.65) or 10.25 % (95 % PI: 6.43, 16.97) of the entire Australian cattle herd. The cattle industry is expected to lose AU$ 9.67 million (95 % PI: 8.56, 13.11) each year just considering the cost of these three drugs. The results suggest that losses due to pinkeye in the Australian cattle industry are considerably higher than previously thought and should be used to inform the development of disease prevention and control policies

Data and the associated R code used to estimate health and economic burden of neurocysticercosis in India

This article contains epidemiological, demographic and other data used for estimating health and economic burden of neurocysticercosis (NCC)-associated active epilepsy in India [1]. Most of the data are embedded in the R-code used for analyses so that the reader is able to replicate the results or adapt the code to their own data. However, data used to conduct sensitivity analyses to evaluate the effect of changing important input values such as prevalence and per capita income on health and economic impact of NCC in India are included in tables. Results from sensitivity analyses are also presented in tables and figures. The paper also includes three scenarios with different age weighting (k) and time discounting (r) values used to estimate health and economic burden of NCC in India. The data for the scenario without any age weighting and time discounting are presented in “Estimation of the health and economic burden of neurocysticercosis in India” [1]