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Ecology
Satellite imagery characterizes local animal reservoir populations of Sin Nombre virus in the southwestern United States
*W. Harry Feinstone Department of Molecular Microbiology and
Immunology and ||Department of Environmental Health
Sciences, The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,
Baltimore, MD 21205; Department of Biology and Museum of
Southwestern Biology, University of New
Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131;
Special Pathogens Branch, Division of Viral and
Rickettsial Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
Atlanta, GA 30333; and ¶IBM T.J. Watson Research Center,
Yorktown Heights, NY 10598
Communicated by M. Gordon Wolman, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD and approved October 11, 2002 (received for review February 7, 2002)
The relationship between the risk of hantaviral pulmonary syndrome (HPS), as estimated from satellite imagery, and local rodent populations was examined. HPS risk, predicted before rodent sampling, was highly associated with the abundance of Peromyscus maniculatus, the reservoir of Sin Nombre virus (SNV). P. maniculatus were common in high-risk sites, and populations in high-risk areas were skewed toward adult males, the subclass most frequently infected with SNV. In the year after an El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), captures of P. maniculatus increased only in high-risk areas. During 1998, few sites had infected mice, but by 1999, 18/20 of the high-risk sites contained infected mice and the crude prevalence was 30.8%. Only 1/18 of the low-risk sites contained infected rodents, and the prevalence of infection was lower (8.3%). Satellite imagery identified environmental features associated with SNV transmission within its reservoir population, but at least 2 years of high-risk conditions were needed for SNV to reach high prevalence. Areas with persistently high-risk environmental conditions may serve as refugia for the survival of SNV in local mouse populations.
Abbreviations: ENSO, El Niño Southern Oscillation; TM, Thematic Mapper; HPS, hantaviral pulmonary syndrome; SNV, Sin Nombre virus
To whom correspondence should be addressed at: The
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 615 North Wolfe
Street, Baltimore, MD 21205. E-mail: ggurrigl{at}jhsph.edu.
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