Ecology and geography of avian influenza (HPAI H5N1) transmission in the Middle East and northeastern Africa.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The emerging highly pathogenic avian influenza strain H5N1 ("HPAI-H5N1") has spread broadly in the past decade, and is now the focus of considerable concern. We tested the hypothesis that spatial distributions of HPAI-H5N1 cases are related consistently and predictably to coarse-scale environmental features in the Middle East and northeastern Africa.We used ecological niche models to relate virus occurrences to 8 km resolution digital data layers summarizing parameters of monthly surface reflectance and landform. Predictive challenges included a variety of spatial stratification schemes in which models were challenged to predict case distributions in broadly unsampled areas.

Results

In almost all tests, HPAI-H5N1 cases were indeed occurring under predictable sets

SUBMITTER: Williams RA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2720944 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature