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Reproduction of East-African bats may guide risk mitigation for coronavirus spillover

BACKGROUND: Bats provide important ecosystem services; however, current evidence supports that they host several zoonotic viruses, including species of the Coronaviridae family. If bats in close interaction with humans host and shed coronaviruses with zoonotic potential, such as the Severe Acute Res...

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Autores principales: Montecino-Latorre, Diego, Goldstein, Tracey, Gilardi, Kirsten, Wolking, David, Van Wormer, Elizabeth, Kazwala, Rudovick, Ssebide, Benard, Nziza, Julius, Sijali, Zikankuba, Cranfield, Michael, Mazet, Jonna A. K.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7149079/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33824945
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s42522-019-0008-8
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author Montecino-Latorre, Diego
Goldstein, Tracey
Gilardi, Kirsten
Wolking, David
Van Wormer, Elizabeth
Kazwala, Rudovick
Ssebide, Benard
Nziza, Julius
Sijali, Zikankuba
Cranfield, Michael
Mazet, Jonna A. K.
author_facet Montecino-Latorre, Diego
Goldstein, Tracey
Gilardi, Kirsten
Wolking, David
Van Wormer, Elizabeth
Kazwala, Rudovick
Ssebide, Benard
Nziza, Julius
Sijali, Zikankuba
Cranfield, Michael
Mazet, Jonna A. K.
author_sort Montecino-Latorre, Diego
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Bats provide important ecosystem services; however, current evidence supports that they host several zoonotic viruses, including species of the Coronaviridae family. If bats in close interaction with humans host and shed coronaviruses with zoonotic potential, such as the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome virus, spillover may occur. Therefore, strategies aiming to mitigate potential spillover and disease emergence, while supporting the conservation of bats and their important ecological roles are needed. Past research suggests that coronavirus shedding in bats varies seasonally following their reproductive cycle; however, shedding dynamics have been assessed in only a few species, which does not allow for generalization of findings across bat taxa and geographic regions. METHODS: To assess the generalizability of coronavirus shedding seasonality, we sampled hundreds of bats belonging to several species with different life history traits across East Africa at different times of the year. We assessed, via Bayesian modeling, the hypothesis that chiropterans, across species and spatial domains, experience seasonal trends in coronavirus shedding as a function of the reproductive cycle. RESULTS: We found that, beyond spatial, taxonomic, and life history differences, coronavirus shedding is more expected when pups are becoming independent from the dam and that juvenile bats are prone to shed these viruses. CONCLUSIONS: These findings could guide policy aimed at the prevention of spillover in limited-resource settings, where longitudinal surveillance is not feasible, by identifying high-risk periods for coronavirus shedding. In these periods, contact with bats should be avoided (for example, by impeding or forbidding people access to caves). Our proposed strategy provides an alternative to culling – an ethically questionable practice that may result in higher pathogen levels – and supports the conservation of bats and the delivery of their key ecosystem services.
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spelling pubmed-71490792020-04-13 Reproduction of East-African bats may guide risk mitigation for coronavirus spillover Montecino-Latorre, Diego Goldstein, Tracey Gilardi, Kirsten Wolking, David Van Wormer, Elizabeth Kazwala, Rudovick Ssebide, Benard Nziza, Julius Sijali, Zikankuba Cranfield, Michael Mazet, Jonna A. K. One Health Outlook Research BACKGROUND: Bats provide important ecosystem services; however, current evidence supports that they host several zoonotic viruses, including species of the Coronaviridae family. If bats in close interaction with humans host and shed coronaviruses with zoonotic potential, such as the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome virus, spillover may occur. Therefore, strategies aiming to mitigate potential spillover and disease emergence, while supporting the conservation of bats and their important ecological roles are needed. Past research suggests that coronavirus shedding in bats varies seasonally following their reproductive cycle; however, shedding dynamics have been assessed in only a few species, which does not allow for generalization of findings across bat taxa and geographic regions. METHODS: To assess the generalizability of coronavirus shedding seasonality, we sampled hundreds of bats belonging to several species with different life history traits across East Africa at different times of the year. We assessed, via Bayesian modeling, the hypothesis that chiropterans, across species and spatial domains, experience seasonal trends in coronavirus shedding as a function of the reproductive cycle. RESULTS: We found that, beyond spatial, taxonomic, and life history differences, coronavirus shedding is more expected when pups are becoming independent from the dam and that juvenile bats are prone to shed these viruses. CONCLUSIONS: These findings could guide policy aimed at the prevention of spillover in limited-resource settings, where longitudinal surveillance is not feasible, by identifying high-risk periods for coronavirus shedding. In these periods, contact with bats should be avoided (for example, by impeding or forbidding people access to caves). Our proposed strategy provides an alternative to culling – an ethically questionable practice that may result in higher pathogen levels – and supports the conservation of bats and the delivery of their key ecosystem services. BioMed Central 2020-02-07 /pmc/articles/PMC7149079/ /pubmed/33824945 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s42522-019-0008-8 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research
Montecino-Latorre, Diego
Goldstein, Tracey
Gilardi, Kirsten
Wolking, David
Van Wormer, Elizabeth
Kazwala, Rudovick
Ssebide, Benard
Nziza, Julius
Sijali, Zikankuba
Cranfield, Michael
Mazet, Jonna A. K.
Reproduction of East-African bats may guide risk mitigation for coronavirus spillover
title Reproduction of East-African bats may guide risk mitigation for coronavirus spillover
title_full Reproduction of East-African bats may guide risk mitigation for coronavirus spillover
title_fullStr Reproduction of East-African bats may guide risk mitigation for coronavirus spillover
title_full_unstemmed Reproduction of East-African bats may guide risk mitigation for coronavirus spillover
title_short Reproduction of East-African bats may guide risk mitigation for coronavirus spillover
title_sort reproduction of east-african bats may guide risk mitigation for coronavirus spillover
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7149079/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33824945
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s42522-019-0008-8
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