Sentinels of Health Threats from Vector Borne and Zoonotic (animal to human) Disease

“Ticks can make us sick!”

Zoo animals, backyard wildlife, pets, and livestock-- all serve the public as valuable "First Alert" systems for emerging infectious diseases. A crow dying outside the gates of the Bronx Zoo was the first known case of West Nile virus in the United States. Sick raccoons or foxes seen in your backyard can be sentinels, warning of an outbreak of rabies.

Bats have long served informally as public health surveillance systems for rabies. Now USGS scientists are working together with colleagues at Colorado State University and the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control studying bats that inhabit homes to determine exactly what the role of bats is in the transmission of rabies.

Prairie dogs are also valuable wildlife informants, alerting us to the occurrence and spread of plague. The bacteria that causes plague persists in the environment at low levels, and are carried from prairie dog to prairie dog by fleas. Periodically the disease escalates into epidemics/epizootics when humans are bitten by fleas that carry the disease.

Even our pets can be sentinels! Ticks can carry pathogens that are the causes of Lyme disease, ehrlichiosis or babesiosis. Both pets and people are afflicted with these neurological or blood diseases.

USGS scientists are studying the wildlife-human disease interconnections, and informing the nation to these diseases as our wildlife alert us to the spread of disease across the nation.

Links to USGS Sentinel Research Projects

• West Nile virus research and updates at the National Wildlife Health Center
• Plague in prairie dogs and endangered black-footed ferrets
• What to do to protect yourself against hantavirus
• Lyme disease transmission and ecology study at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center
• The Wildlife Disease Information Node of the National Biological Informatics Infrastructure
• West Nile virus studies at Patuxent Wildlife Research Center
• Early detection of avian influenza in wild birds

More Information

• Wildlife as a Source of Zoonotic Infections
• Emerging Zoonoses: in Emerging Infectious Diseases
• Converging Issues in Veterinary and Public Health
• Free-living Canada Geese and Antimicrobial Resistance: in Emerging Infectious Diseases
• Using Human Disease Outbreaks as a Guide to Multilevel Ecosystem Interventions: in Environmental Health
• Unhealthy landscapes: Policy Recommendations on Land Use Change and Infectious Disease Emergence: in Environmental Health

Accessibility FOIA Privacy Policies and Notices

U.S. Department of the Interior | U.S. Geological Survey
URL: http://health.usgs.gov/sentinels/zoonotic_vector-borne.html
Page Contact Information: Herb Buxton
Page Last Modified: 19-Jun-2008@10:01