Descripción del proyecto
Control de enfermedades transmitidas por vectores
Las enfermedades transmitidas por vectores afectan a decenas de millones de personas y provocan casi un millón de muertes cada año en todo el mundo. Los vectores son en la mayoría de los casos artrópodos hematófagos organismos que transmiten afecciones entre animales y humanos y que son responsables del contagio de enfermedades como la del Chagas, el Zika, el paludismo y el dengue. Los intentos sanitarios por controlar las poblaciones de vectores suelen provocar su declive, pero cambios evolutivos y ecológicos inesperados pueden socavar las medidas de control. El proyecto MOVE, financiado con fondos europeos, se dedica a la integración de avances científicos en estudios ecológicos sobre organismos vectores, aplicaciones de entomología médica y medidas de salud pública. La investigación adoptará un enfoque interdisciplinario y empleará modelos espacio-estado cuantitativos para obtener datos de vigilancia de la población de cinco países donde el paludismo es endémico con análisis complejos del impacto de la iniciativa de intervención sobre la dinámica de la población de vectores.
Objetivo
Control of vector-borne diseases from Chagas to Malaria to Dengue largely relies on reducing or eliminating the arthropod vector populations. These public health initiatives routinely lead to at least initial declines in vector populations. The challenge is that as populations decline, unexpected evolutionary (such as insecticide resistance) and ecological changes (such as population fragmentation and altered density-dependence) can occur that might facilitate or undermine control efforts. However, the relative importance of these ecological intra- and inter-specific processes in regulating vector populations is almost unknown, which hinders the prediction of vector population dynamics and how different interventions might be most effectively deployed to sustainably suppress vectors. Although vector surveillance has generated extensive high-resolution time series datasets to assess the factors that underpin population persistence and regulation, the cutting-edge analytical tools required to overcome the complexity of these data have been mostly developed by ecologists and have rarely been applied in medical entomology. Filling both these knowledge and methodological gaps will require closer integration of public health science, medical entomology and ecology that I intend to deliver through this proposal. As a quantitative ecologist, I will work closely with medical entomologists and public health scientists, to develop and apply sophisticated state-space models to longitudinal vector surveillance data from five malaria endemic countries. I will determine how interventions impact vector: 1) population regulation, 2) metapopulation connectivity and persistence, and 3) community composition. This unprecedented demographic dissection of vector populations will simultaneously challenge ecological theory and explore how to harness intra- and inter-specific processes in vector populations to accelerate 'end-game' strategies that move from vector control to elimination.
Ámbito científico
Palabras clave
Programa(s)
Régimen de financiación
ERC-STG - Starting GrantInstitución de acogida
G12 8QQ Glasgow
Reino Unido