CC-VBD: Ricerca multisettoriale con approccio “one-health” e “eco-health” per la riduzione dell'impatto del cambiamento climatico sul rischio di malattie trasmesse da vettori

Background To date, nearly half of the world's population is at risk of infection with a vector-borne pathogen. Examples of important emerging diseases are malaria, West Nile, dengue fever, chikungunya and Zika. West Nile virus (WNV) is a mosquito-borne flavivirus, which every year causes outbreaks of encephalitis in humans and horses in Italy and other European countries. In 2022, a new WNV lineage 1 (WNV-1) strain emerged in the Veneto Region, where it co-circulated with an endemic WNV-2 strain and caused a large human outbreak (Barzon et al. Euro Surveill 2022). Epidemiological data suggested that the infection with the new WNV-1 strain was associated with an increased risk to develop neuroinvasive disease (Barzon et al. J Travel Med 2022). Climate change has an impact on mosquito-borne diseases, by influencing the distribution of amplifying hosts and vector population. Although climate change is considered a major factor in the spread and prevalence of vector-borne diseases, the interaction with other global changes such as land use, urbanisation, socioeconomic factors, travel and trade may influence the occurrence of these diseases in the near future (Lu Lu et al, 2024).