The signs come on shortly—acute fever, adopted by debilitating joint ache that may final for months. Although hardly ever deadly, the chikungunya virus, a mosquito-borne sickness, may be notably extreme for high-risk people, together with newborns and older adults.
Whereas the virus is widespread in tropical and subtropical areas, together with Asia, Africa and South America, public well being officers have been monitoring reported infections in Europe and, in September, a confirmed case in Lengthy Island, New York.
Outbreaks of chikungunya have prompted the Facilities for Illness Management to challenge well being notices to vacationers sure for Bangladesh; Cuba; Guangdong Province, China; Kenya; Madagascar; Somalia; and Sri Lanka.
In Guangdong Province, an “unprecedented” outbreak not too long ago prompted authorities officers in China to mandate quarantines for anybody suspected of being contaminated by the virus, spraying people with mosquito repellent and spraying impacted buildings and different areas with insecticide.
In a brand new research, printed in Science Advances, researchers on the College of Notre Dame analyzed greater than 80 outbreaks of chikungunya virus to enhance prediction of future outbreaks and inform vaccine trial improvement.
“Chikungunya outbreaks are unpredictable in each dimension and severity,” mentioned Alex Perkins, the Ann and Daniel Monahan Collegiate Professor of infectious illness epidemiology within the Division of Organic Sciences, and co-author of the research. “You may have one outbreak that infects just some folks, and one other in an analogous setting that infects tens of hundreds. That unpredictability is what makes public well being planning—and vaccine improvement—so tough.”
For the research, Alexander Meyer, a postdoctoral researcher in Perkins’ lab and lead writer of the research, and a workforce of researchers reconstructed and analyzed 86 chikungunya outbreaks, creating the most important comparative dataset of its form.
“As a substitute of taking a look at outbreaks in isolation, taking a look at many, all of which different in dimension and severity, allowed us to seek for patterns amongst them,” Meyer mentioned.
Chikungunya was first recognized within the Fifties. Outbreaks have change into more and more frequent and widespread, however they’re additionally sporadic and tough to foretell, posing a problem to public well being officers on the subject of planning for and stopping infections.
Modifications in outbreaks of chikungunya, transmitted by bites from contaminated mosquitoes—Aedes aegypti or Aedes albopictus are the first vectors—and different mosquito-borne diseases are sometimes thought of in relation to local weather change, as hotter, extra humid circumstances can promote mosquito exercise.
However Perkins mentioned this research confirmed that local weather isn’t essentially an important issue when attempting to foretell the severity of an outbreak of illness attributable to a virus like chikungunya.
“Local weather elements like temperature and rainfall can inform us the place outbreaks are potential, however this research exhibits that they don’t assist very a lot in predicting how extreme they are going to be,” he mentioned. “Native circumstances matter—issues like housing high quality, mosquito density and the way communities reply. Some variation is solely attributable to probability. That randomness is a part of the story, too.”
Presently, solely two vaccines for chikungunya have acquired regulatory approval—however they don’t seem to be broadly out there in areas the place the virus is most typical.
That’s the reason having such a big, complete dataset is so useful on the subject of vaccine improvement, Perkins mentioned.
To check for efficacy, vaccine makers want correct predictions of the place an outbreak may happen earlier than it occurs, to conduct trials and monitor whether or not candidate vaccines are efficient.
The research demonstrates how a extra complete evaluation of previous outbreaks may help public well being officers put together for future outbreaks, thereby defending weak populations and aiding vaccine improvement.
Extra data: Alexander D. Meyer et al, Predictability of infectious illness outbreak severity: Chikungunya as a case research, Science Advances (2025). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adt5419
