Multiscale predictability of Cutaneous Leishmaniasis in Morocco and Tunisia through the AMO-NAO coupling and its modulation of regional rainfall

• Main Authors: San-José, Adrià, Aoun, Karim, Lemrani, Meryem, Idis, Mhaidi, Bouratbine, Aida, Paul, Richard, E., Rodó, Xavier
• Other Authors: Instituto de Salud Global - Institute For Global Health Barcelona (ISGlobal), Institut Pasteur de Tunis, Réseau International des Instituts Pasteur (RIIP), Institut Pasteur du Maroc, Écologie et Émergence des Pathogènes Transmis par les Arthropodes / Ecology and Emergence of Arthropod-borne Pathogens, Institut Pasteur Paris (IP)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université Paris Cité (UPCité)-Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement (INRAE), Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats = Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA), A.SJ was supported by a fellowship from “la Caixa” Foundation, Spain (ID 100010434, fellowship code LCF/BQ/DR 19/11740017). A. SJ and X.R . acknowledge the support from the grant CEX2018-000806-S funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and support from the Generalitat de Catalunya through the CERCA Program.
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2024
• Subjects: [SDV]Life Sciences [q-bio]; North Atlantic; North Atlantic oscillation
• Online Access: https://pasteur.hal.science/pasteur-04559670; https://pasteur.hal.science/pasteur-04559670/document; https://pasteur.hal.science/pasteur-04559670/file/2023.12.14.23299949v3.full.pdf; https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.12.14.23299949

Posted January 17, 2024 on medRxiv. The development of effective Early Warning Systems (EWS) for climate-driven zoonotic diseases has been hindered by a lack of predictors with adequate lead time for effective interventions. Atmosphere-Ocean coupled phenomena present predictability beyond the atmospheric deterministic limits and therefore are potentially useful climate drivers to be integrated in mathematical models. While the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) has been used to forecast disease dynamics in equatorial and tropical regions, there is a lack of similar applications for temperate areas, likely because of the perceived unpredictability of atmospheric systems such as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). This study challenges this notion by establishing a connection between the NAO and its oceanic counterpart, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), revealing common low-frequency components that strongly modulate Cutaneous Leishmaniasis (CL) in Northern Africa. We demonstrate not only short-term couplings, such as the known NAO’s impact on seasonal rainfall, which subsequently affects CL incidence, but we also uncover a significant lagged effect of approximately three years on rainfall and four years on CL incidence. Our findings reveal a unified, multiscale mechanism that influences CL epidemiology across different time scales, underscoring the predictive skill for short and long term time frames, which should be integrated in CL forecasting models.