Infectious Disease Sensitivity to Climate and Other Driver-Pressure Changes: Research Effort and Gaps for Lyme Disease and Cryptosporidiosis

Climate sensitivity of infectious diseases is discussed in many studies. A quantitative basis for distinguishing and predicting the disease impacts of climate and other environmental and anthropogenic driver-pressure changes, however, is often lacking. To assess research effort and identify possible key gaps that can guide further research, we here apply a scoping review approach to two widespread infectious diseases: Lyme disease (LD) as a vector-borne and cryptosporidiosis as a water-borne disease. Based on the emerging publication data, we further structure and quantitatively assess the driver-pressure foci and interlinkages considered in the published research so far. This shows important research gaps for the roles of rarely investigated water-related and socioeconomic factors for LD, and land-related factors for cryptosporidiosis. For both diseases, the interactions of host and parasite communities with climate and other driver-pressure factors are understudied, as are also important world regions relative to the disease geographies; in particular, Asia and Africa emerge as main geographic gaps for LD and cryptosporidiosis research, respectively. The scoping approach developed and gaps identified in this study should be useful for further assessment and guidance of research on infectious disease sensitivity to climate and other environmental and anthropogenic changes around the world.