Environmental spillover of emerging viruses: Is it true?

Gavotte Laurent, Gaucherel Cédric, Frutos Roger. 2023. Environmental spillover of emerging viruses: Is it true?. Environmental Research, 233:116416, 8 p.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2023.116416

Article de revue ; Article de recherche ; Article de revue à facteur d'impact

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Liste HCERES des revues (en SHS) : oui

Thème(s) HCERES des revues (en SHS) : Psychologie-éthologie-ergonomie

Résumé : The concept of environmental “spillover” of pathogens to humans is widely used in the scientific literature about emerging diseases with the idea that it is scientifically proven. However, the exact characterization of the mechanism of spillover is simply lacking. A systematic review retrieved 688 articles using this term. The systematic analysis revealed an irreducible polysemy covering ten different definitions. It also demonstrated the absence of explicit definition in most of the articles, and even antinomies. A modeling analysis of the various processes described by these ten definitions showed that none of them corresponded to the complete trajectory leading to the emergence of a disease. There is no article demonstrating a mechanism of spillover. There are only ten articles proposing ideas on how a putative spillover could work but they merely are intellectual constructions. All other articles only reuse the term with no demonstration. It is essential to understand that since there is no scientific concept behind the “spillover”, it might be dangerous to base public health and public protection against future pandemics on it.

Mots-clés Agrovoc : épidémiologie, virologie, transmission des maladies, virus des animaux, zoonose, maladie infectieuse

Mots-clés complémentaires : Maladie émergente

Mots-clés libres : Spillover, Emerging diseases, Inter-species transmission, Zoonoses, Disease emergence modeling

Classification Agris : S50 - Santé humaine
L73 - Maladies des animaux

Champ stratégique Cirad : CTS 4 (2019-) - Santé des plantes, des animaux et des écosystèmes

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