2024-04-13 07:51:15
“Understanding how and why viruses evolve to jump to different carriers across the tree of life can help us understand how new viral diseases emerge in humans and animals,” explains Cedric Tan, a geneticist at University College London, UK.
From the 32 families of viruses studied, scientists have singled out those that can infect the human body. After calculating how often viruses pass from one species to another, it turned out that 64 percent. viruses are transferred from a person to another animal.
Given that humans thrive in diverse environments, it makes sense for our pathogens to spread so widely, says Michael Le Page: “Our population is huge. And our global presence is basically everywhere.”
This gives our viruses a much better chance of successfully jumping to a wider variety of hosts compared to other types of viruses, which tend to have much more limited options.
What’s more, by our behavior we give viruses even more opportunities to make this transition. By stressing the life around us through habitat alteration or destruction, including pollution and even the sound of our voices, we make the creatures living next to us more susceptible to viruses.
This is not only a serious environmental problem, but also a major global health problem for our own species.
“If a human-borne virus infects a new animal species, the virus may continue to thrive even if it is eradicated among humans — or even develop new adaptations before infecting humans again.” sako C. Tanas.
During the pandemic, we observed such cases of the virus going back and forth.
It is important to emphasize that zoonoses (infectious diseases affecting humans and animals) pose a huge threat to endangered species, raising questions about the ethics of vaccinating wild animals.
“Humans are just one node in a large and complex carrier network in which viruses are constantly changing,” the team wrote in the paper.
This study is published žurnale „Nature Ecology & Evolution“.
Let’s get “Science Alert”.
2024-04-13 07:51:15