top of page
DENGUE
ARBOVIRUS TRANSMISSION DYNAMICS ACROSS A
METAPOPULATION UNDERGOING ENVIRONMENTAL
AND SOCIAL CHANGE
Project Objectives
The Dengue Study began in 2016 and is still ongoing.
Dengue, and other Aedes-borne viral diseases are associated with explosive urban epidemics, but rural transmission is undergoing expansion and its role in virus maintenance is poorly understood. Understanding transmission dynamics at a regional level requires us to go beyond conceptualizing dengue as urban or rural, terms that are administrative and political rather than etiologic.
Borrowing from metapopulation theory, the transmission dynamics of dengue are better analyzed using spatial terms that describe environmental, social, and biological dynamic processes at multiple scales. These dynamic processes are heterogeneous and interconnected at varying degrees.
Our overall hypothesis is that dengue transmission dynamics occur at multiple geographic scales, driven by connections among humans through social and transportation networks, and mosquito densities at fine scales (within locations) and by regional, national, and international transportation networks at larger scales.
The relative contribution of intra- and inter-location movements depends on key geolocatable characteristics that we categorize as landscapes (e.g., weather, structural and surface features), bioscapes (e.g., mosquito behavior and human immunity), and socioscapes (e.g., movement, social networks). To capture the regional infection dynamics of dengue several field activities are being conducted.
Lab work in Ecuador is conducted at:
Project Activities
Active Case Surveillance
Our field workers monitor health clinics in each of our sentinel communities as well as the Borbón Hospital (the commercial center of the region). When someone presents with dengue-like symptoms, we administer a rapid test and store a serum sample in liquid nitrogen for transport to our Quito-based laboratory where we perform PCR analysis. We collect a convalescent sample 12 days after the initial sample.
bottom of page