emergência de doenças infecciosas humanas: Processos ecológicos e abordagens preditivas

Abstract

Recent research on the increasing trend of human infections disease emergence has stressed the importance of zoonotic processes, especially those originating in wildlife. Several ecological mechanisms contribute to increased risk of diseases emergence from wildlife to humans. Among these we should emphasize the loss of biological diversity, through the mechanism of "dilution" as well as the "spillover" mechanism in the context of meta-community dynamics. Some predictive approaches have been developed to facilitate the identifcation of situations of high risk of disease emergence. The most important is the "Hotspots" approach, based on epidemiological, demographic, historical, microbiological and biogeographical information.