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River flow may spur cholera outbreaks
Jutla AS. Am J Trop Med Hyg. 2011;85:303–308.
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Rather than sea surface temperatures, it may be the nutrient-rich, powerful river flow of coastal waters that impel cholera outbreaks, according to new findings published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.
"Our results suggest that the observed positive correlation between sea surface temperatures and chlorophyll in the Bay of Bengal is, in fact, not causal and should not form the basis to infer or construct prediction models for cholera outbreaks," Shafiqul Islam, ScD, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Tufts University, told Infectious Disease News. "Finding an association between sea surface temperatures and cholera outbreaks should not lead us to conclude that with global warming, cholera will definitely go up."
Islam and colleagues set out to examine the association between increased sea surface temperature and the increase in phytoplankton to further understand the effect of the relationship on cholera outbreaks. Data indicated that the correlation between cholera incidence and sea surface temperature in the Bay of Bengal is not causal.
However, they found that phytoplankton produced by the flow of cold, nutrient-rich deep ocean waters and coastal phytoplankton that thrived during high-river release with terrestrial nutrients were independent sources of phytoplankton abundance.
"The observed positive correlation between sea surface temperature and chlorophyll in the Bay of Bengal and other major fresh water basins globally are primarily caused by terrestrial nutrient inputs from river discharge," Islam said. "An important aspect of our study is that it provides a new and physically meaningful explanation as to why, despite higher sea surface temperature, more phytoplankton is found in the coastal areas where fresh water discharge is high." – by Ashley DeNyse
Disclosures: This research was supported by a grant from the NIH under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009; ClinicalTrials.gov number, 1RC1TW 008587-01.
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