Scoping Review on Bovine Tuberculosis and Zoonotic Disease Spread
paper
Scoping review of 167 multi-host bTB epidemiology studies identifying analytical and One Health research priorities.
Update: Now published in Veterinary Research — read the published open-access article here.
Kimberly Conteddu, Holly M. English, Andrew W. Byrne, Bawan Amin, Laura L. Griffin, Prabhleen Kaur, Virginia Morera-Pujol, Kilian J. Murphy, Michael Salter-Townshend, Adam Francis Smith, and Simone Ciuti examine multi-host zoonotic epidemiology in A scoping review on bovine tuberculosis highlights the need for novel data streams and analytical approaches to curb zoonotic diseases.
- Background: Zoonotic diseases represent a major societal challenge in terms of health and economic impacts. One Health approaches to managing zoonoses require cross-disciplinary collaboration, novel data streams, and statistical modelling. Bovine tuberculosis (bTB) is a prime example involving domestic livestock, wildlife hosts, and environmental factors.
- Objective: We undertook a scoping review of multi-host bTB epidemiology to identify trends in host species focus, analytical methodologies, spatial scales, and One Health integration.
- Results: Reviewing 167 articles, we found strong geographic and species concentration on the badger–cattle episystem, with far less attention to multi-host systems in southern Africa. Relatively few studies modelled management exit strategies, human disturbance, habitat change, or weather/climate variables.
- Conclusions: Linking high-resolution empirical wildlife tracking with mathematical and simulation modelling offers a “virtuous cycle” to inform bTB policy and broader zoonotic disease control.