Climate Change and Infectious Disease
Call for Papers
Virtually every atmospheric scientist agrees that climate change—most of it anthropegenic—is occurring rapidly. This includes, but is not limited to, global warming. Other variables include changes in rainfall, weather-related natural hazards, and humidity. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a major report earlier this year establishing, without a doubt, that global warming is occurring, and that it is due to human activities.
Beginning about two decades ago, scientists began studying (and speculating) how global warming might affect the distribution of infectious disease, with almost total emphasis on vector-borne diseases. Much of the speculation was based upon the prediction that if mean temperatures increase over time with greater distance from the equator, there would be a northward and southward movement of vectors, and therefore the prevalence of vector-borne diseases would increase in temperate zones. The reality has been more elusive, and predictive epidemiology has not yet allowed us to come to conclusive predictions that have been tested concerning the relationship between climate change and infectious disease. The impact of climate change on infectious disease is not limited to vector-borne disease, or to infections directly impacting human health. Climate change may affect patterns of disease among plants and animals, impacting the human food supply, or indirectly affecting human disease patterns as the host range for disease reservoirs change.
In this special issue, Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Infectious Diseases is soliciting cross-cutting, interdisciplinary articles that take new and broad perspectives ranging from what we might learn from previous climate changes on disease spread to integrating evolutionary and ecologic theory with epidemiologic evidence in order to identify key areas for study in order to predict the impact of ongoing climate change on the spread of infectious diseases. We especially encourage papers addressing broad questions like the following. How do the dynamics of the drivers of climate change affect downstream patterns of disease in human, other animals, and plants? Is climate change an evolutionary pressure for pathogens? Can climate change and infectious disease be integrated in a systems framework? What are the relationships between climate change at the macro level and microbes at the micro level?
Authors should follow the Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Infectious Diseases manuscript format described at the journal site http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ipid/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/, according to the following timetable:
| Manuscript Due | June 1, 2008 |
| First Round of Reviews | September 1, 2008 |
| Publication Date | December 1, 2008 |
Guest Editors
- Bettina Fries, Albert-Einstein College of Medicine, Yeshira University, NY 10461, USA
- Jonathan D. Mayer, Division of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, University of Washington, WA 98195, USA