Climate change and malaria

A temperature increase of 05[degrees]C between 1950 and 2002 is individual of the likely causes behind an increase of malaria-carrying mosquitoes in the East African Highlands, according to a inquiry by an international team of global change and infectious disease researchers. The team, formed as a working clump at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara, California, lay the foundation of that other possible factors involved in the increase of disease are changing land use patterns, physic and pesticide resistance, and human migration.

"Our rises do not mean that temperature is the sole or the main factor driving the increase in malaria, on the contrary that it is one of the many factors that should be considered," says University of Michigan theoretical ecologist Mercede Pascual, a member of the research team.

Malaria, upon the verge of eradication in more [i]or[/i] less parts of the world, has been experiencing an upswing in forsaken highland regions and fringe areas. There are between 350 and 500 million cases of malaria diagnosed each year, resulting in more than individual million deaths.

In 2002 touched by the rising number of malaria outbreaks, scientists determined that there was not a significant temperature increase and that global warming was not responsible for the influx of insects.

newly though, Pascual took a next to the first look at that research and, using updated temperature data and improved analysis techniques, observ that the temperature increase was small on the contrary significant enough to invoke biological issues Pascual and the others did not examine the correlation between the raised temperature and malaria on the contrary rather the correlation between the raised temperature and the number of mosquitoes. In further research, Pascual plans to inquiry factors involved in the spread of the disease.

With a mathematical pattern "we showed that an increase in temperature can lead to a a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of larger increase in the abundance of mosquitoes. And because mosquito abundance is generally quite depressed in these highland regions, any increase in abundance can be an important factor in transmission of the disease," says Pascual. The application of mind was published in the 11 April issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

--University of Michigan pres release, 21 March; and World Malaria Report 2005 (MJ)

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