Pets are normally sheltered from the harsh realities of wild living. But across Europe, increasing temperatures will expose pets to new infectious diseases spread by ticks, fleas and mosquitoes, according to new research.

Tick populations already appear to be increasing with the change in seasons. As winters become milder, ticks are becoming active all year round.

The European dog tick is transmitting a malaria-like disease, canine babesiosis, into countries where it was once rare including Belgium, Germany, Poland and the Netherlands. Meanwhile, ticks are living at greater densities across Europe, increasing their risk of passing tick-borne encephalitis to horses and dogs.

Cat flea typhus, still a rare disease, may also become more common in both cats and dogs, according to Frederic Beugnet of in Lyon, France.

In a separate paper, of the University of Milan, Italy, has found that dogs in central Europe will increasingly become vulnerable to the roundworm , spread by mosquitoes, as summer temperatures climb high enough for the parasite to incubate in its fly host.

and colleagues at the University of Bristol, UK, have also found a significant reservoir of canine leishmaniosis in dogs living in the southern UK. If climate change allows sandflies to spread into the country, there is a real danger the disease could spread, they warn.

Journal references: , DOIs: , ,

Four individuals have been seen rubbing a soothing balm onto their limbs, the first known examples of self medicating. Great apes have never before been seen using drugs in this way. Remarkably though, local people use the same balm, administering it in a similar way to treat aches and pains.

Primatologist Helen Morrogh-Bernard, of the University of Cambridge, UK, made the discovery while studying Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) in the in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia.

In 2005, she witnessed an adult female pick a handful of leaves from a plant and then chew them, mixing the leaves with her saliva to produce a green-white lather. The female then scooped up some of the lather with her right hand and applied it up and down the back of her left arm, from the base of the shoulder to the wrist, just as a person would apply sunscreen.

“She was concentrating on her arm only and was methodical in the way she was applying the soapy foam,” says Morrogh-Bernard. “I knew this must be some form of self-medication.”

After using the leaves, the orangutan dropped them, allowing Morrogh-Bernard and her assistant to find out what they were. The leaves belong to a genus called , a group of plants that orangutans do not eat as part of their normal diet. However, local indigenous people know the plant well, grinding it into a balm and applying it to their skin to treat muscular pain, sore bones and swellings.

Chimpanzees and gorillas are thought to self medicate, mainly by swallowing rough leaves or chewed plant pith to help flush out intestinal parasites. A few monkey species and one species of lemur are known to rub concoctions, such as tobacco, onion or garlic onto their fur to repel insects or parasites. But wild great apes have never before been seen rubbing ointments onto their fur.

Morrogh-Bernard, who has since seen three other orangutans using the plant in the same way, says the finding “links apes and humans directly”.

The apes may not have learnt how to apply the anti-inflammatory ointment from local people, she says, but perhaps ancestors of the indigenous population learnt about the drug from the apes.

Journal Reference: (DOI:10.1007/s10764-008-9266-5)

On Sunday, scientists at the (IAH) in Pirbright, Surrey, confirmed that cattle at a nearby farm were infected with foot and mouth virus. The UK has remained free of the virus since the previous major outbreak in 2001, which caused a national crisis and cost its economy over ÂŁ4 billion.

IAH scientists have now identified the strain responsible for the latest outbreak as very close to 01/BFS, a strain originally isolated in 1967 that is used for research and commercial vaccine production. It has not circulated in Europe for 40 years.

An independent review is taking place to ascertain the source of the outbreak, with experts believing it either originated at the IAH laboratory itself or at the laboratory of animal vaccine manufacturer , which is housed next door. As żěè¶ĚĘÓƵ went to press, the IAH said there was no evidence that any biosafety procedures had been breached at its Pirbright laboratory.

Global alliance

Just 10 days before the latest outbreak was confirmed, a report was published in the journal Vaccine that called for more work to be done into controlling foot and mouth disease (FMD).

The report was co-authored by scientists from the world’s five leading FMD research centres, including the IAH in Pirbright, two leading labs from the US Department of Agriculture based in Greenport, New York, and Beltsville, Maryland, a CSIRO lab in Geelong, Australia, and the National Center for Foreign Animal Disease in Winnipeg, Canada.

In the report, scientists from these labs, which have come together to form the Global FMD Research Alliance, detail how little we still know about the virus and how it is spread. “There are certain fundamental questions specific to FMD still not answered,” the report says.

In particular, it highlights that far more research needs to be done into how cattle and livestock carry the disease, how their immune systems respond to infection and how to create effective vaccines.

Highly variable

The report describes how there are seven different types of the virus, and each type has many strains. Although each strain produces similar symptoms in cattle, each behaves differently.

Some strains are far more virulent than others and some can be shed in large quantities as aerosols from infected animals. Given favourable weather conditions, these airborne virus particles can spread large distances. One type of the virus, Type C, was thought to have died out worldwide until it suddenly reappeared in Brazil after a 10-year absence.

“There are many enigmas surrounding the behaviour of different serotypes of FMD virus,” says the report, Global FMD control – is it an option?. It goes on to detail how little we know about how long the virus can persist in animals carrying it, and the mechanism of transmission.

The report also states that considerable advances have been made in developing vaccines, diagnostic tools and antiviral agents against viral diseases. But in the case of FMD, “a limiting factor…is the few laboratories in the world able to work with live FMD virus.”

One of those laboratories is of course the IAH lab at Pirbright, which now finds itself at the centre of the latest and most high-profile recent outbreak of FMD.

Journal: Vaccine, vol 25, p 5660

ONE item was conspicuously low on the agenda when China’s President Hu Jintao paid a visit to the US last week. While trade, Taiwan and human rights were discussed, the environment barely merited a mention.

Yet China is second only to the US in the league of the world’s most polluting nations, and is catching up fast. While Hu was in Washington, his country was suffering its worst atmospheric pollution for years. Dust storms had just blanketed one-eighth of the nation, according to the China Central Meteorological Station, covering people, houses, cars and streets in brown dust. The state media reported last week that two workers in the western province of Gansu had died in ferocious dust storms lifting from the plains of Inner Mongolia and north-western China.

The storms were no aberration. By 19 April, the capital, Beijing, had recorded just 56 days of clear blue sky in 2006, 16 fewer than at the same time last year, while the World Bank says that 16 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities are now in China.

This perfect storm of pollution has been brewing for decades, ever since China began its long march to becoming an economic superpower. Now a new analysis by Chinese environmental scientists led by Honghong Yi at Tsinghua University in Beijing, shows just how bad it is (Energy Policy, DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2006.01.019). China has done much to improve the quality of its air in recent years, but these efforts are being swamped by the pace of economic development and the pollution its burgeoning industries produce. China emits more sulphur dioxide (SO₂) than any other nation in the world, and as a result acid rain falls on more than a third of the country. Other pollutants, in particular emissions of fine particles known as PM10s, are rapidly increasing.

China’s pollution problem has the makings of a social disaster as well as an environmental one. Many Chinese have yet to benefit from the economic boom, but nevertheless suffer poor health from breathing in thick, acrid air laced with SO₂ and nitrogen oxides (NOx), suspended fine particulates such as PM10s, and volatile organic compounds. If nothing is done, the total cost to the nation’s health will rise to astronomical levels within just 15 years.

“China emits more sulphur dioxide than any other nation, and as a result acid rain falls on over a third of the country”

The picture is unlikely to improve over the coming decades. According to the National Bureau of Statistics of China, the country has tripled its energy use since 1980, and is now responsible for 10 per cent of the world’s energy consumption. China has plenty of coal to fuel its economic growth, but little petroleum and natural gas. The country burnt around 1.3 billion tonnes of coal in 2000, and if current economic trends continue it will need to burn over 2 billion tonnes in 2020. Coal burning by power plants and industry is the main source of SO₂ and particulate pollutants in the atmosphere.

In an effort to control its emissions of SO₂, China has closed many small coal-fired power plants and is burning low sulphur coal rather than coal with high sulphur content. Many plants are also cleaning their coal before burning to remove sulphur, or scrubbing it out from gas flue emissions. But there is little more that can be done to further reduce sulphur levels in coal. Yi’s team estimates that even if power plants reduce their sulphur emissions from each tonne of coal burnt by 10 per cent every year, it would have little impact on the formation of acid rain in the near future. The acid rain that falls in China is more acidic than in North America or northern Europe, as it is predominantly sulphuric acid. With ever more vehicles taking to Chinese roads and emitting significant amounts of NOx gases, the acid rain will contain nitric acid as well as sulphuric acid. That is why measures to clean up SO₂ emissions alone will not be enough, say the researchers.

In their forthcoming paper, Yi’s team predicts that even with the continued implementation of more stringent controls, emissions of SO₂ and NOx gases in China will continue to rise until 2010 at the earliest, while the quantity of suspended particulates in the air will not level out until at least 2020. Little attention has been paid to the growing amounts of PM10 particulates that extra vehicles and industry are putting into the air.

The dust storms that envelop China every year are a consequence of the environmental degradation that has turned huge areas of grassland in the north of the country into a vast dustbowl. The government is attempting to combat this by planting a “green great wall” of trees across more than 35 million hectares of land by 2050. The idea is that the trees will act as a windbreak that will slow the winds enough for them to drop their load of dust, and will also help to bind the dust into the soil. Not everyone thinks this will work, however: the idea has been criticised as a waste of effort that could even exacerbate the problem by removing precious water reserves from the soil (żěè¶ĚĘÓƵ, 4 June 2005, p 38).

Meanwhile, more and more people in China are suffering, and dying, from respiratory diseases caused by air pollution. Levels of persistent organic pollutants and volatile organic compounds such as benzene and toluene are much higher than in most developed countries. Half the cases of respiratory disease in the country are now caused by air pollution, while in China’s 11 largest cities at least 50,000 people die each year from the soot and fine particles produced by coal burning, with another 400,000 people suffering from chronic bronchitis, Yi’s team says. In areas blighted by serious air pollution, five to eight times as many people die from lung cancer as in non-polluted areas.

“The cost of treating diseases indirectly caused by burning coal will account for 13 per cent of China’s GDP by 2020”

On present trends, the World Bank estimates that by 2020 China will be paying $390 billion to treat diseases indirectly caused by burning coal, and that this would account for an astounding 13 per cent of its predicted GDP at that time. That suggests that something has to give.

Yi’s team calls for improved monitoring and evaluation systems for air pollution in Chinese cities. Political, legislative and economic decisions are needed to deal with the problems, while government departments need to do more to integrate and extend research to mitigate air pollution and find technical solutions, the researchers say.

The Chinese government realises that action is needed, even if this did not prominently figure in President Hu’s statements in the US. The prime minister Wen Jiabao told an environmental meeting in China last week that the recent dust storms were a reminder of the severity of the country’s environmental problems, and that it needs to intensify efforts to rein in pollution. Last year, China’s SO₂ emissions were 27 per cent higher than in 2000, he said, despite the government having set a goal of reducing them by 10 per cent over that period.

Despite the US’s track record as a global polluter, China could do worse than compare notes with its economic rival. In a study to be published next month in Atmospheric Environment (vol 40, p 2607) researchers from the US and China, led by Xuexi Tie of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Physics, showed from satellite observations that the densities of fine aerosols such as sulphates and black carbon are twice as high in the industrial regions of eastern China as in corresponding industrial areas of the eastern US. This appears to be a result of China’s reliance on burning coal and biomass for fuel. Levels of coarse particulates, mainly desert dust, are also much higher in China.

Emissions of non-methane hydrocarbons such as ethane and propane, however, are lower in China than in the US – again a consequence of China’s reliance on coal, while emissions of natural hydrocarbons such as isoprene produced by trees are also lower. When oxidised by sunlight, such hydrocarbons create ozone, which means that in summertime less ozone is produced at ground level in China than in the US. But there is a sting in the tail.

If China burns more oil in the future, as the government intends, it will both emit progressively more hydrocarbons, and reduce aerosol concentrations in eastern China. “That will improve visibility, and at the same time enhance ozone production,” warns Tie. “China will have to take drastic measures to reduce the emissions of primary pollutants in order to avoid ozone pollution events.”