- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Rosenberg's seminar is from 12:10 to 1 p.m. in 122 Briggs Hall. His is the first in a series of winter quarter seminars sponsored by the department.
“Infecting humans can be a successful career move for ambitious animal pathogens, especially for RNA viruses,” Rosenberg says. “The path from vertebrate to human requires some type of contact and for some pathogens that is provided by mosquitoes, ticks or other blood-feeding arthropods. Nearly 40 percent of the 213 viruses causing human disease are transmitted by arthropods (arboviruses) and all these are zoonoses.”
“New viral pathogens are discovered every year but an analysis of the historical trends showed that the rates of discovery depend on how and where we look,” Rosenberg noted. “ Discovery of arboviruses has lagged since 1965 as dedicated surveillance has weakened in the tropics. Sampling of animal populations can uncover a rich variety of viruses but gives little indication of emergent potential. The most sensitive sentinel for emerging human pathogens is humans.”
Since graduating from Johns Hopkins, he's spent his career – much of it in Bangladesh, Thailand and Kenya –working for the National Institutes of Healthy, U.S. Army, USDA and CDC on various aspects of the transmission of vector-borne diseases, mostly malaria, but also Lyme disease, plague, tularemia. His expertise also includes the influence of climate on disease ecology and vector-borne diseases.
“More recently I've concentrated on designing strategies and programs for identifying the causes of undiagnosed infectious disease, especially in Uganda, Indonesia and the U.S.,” he said. “I do the typical late career things, like editing Emerging Infectious Diseases, chairing the WHO working group on dengue and,” he quipped,” sleeping at committee meetings.”
For the remainder of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology speakers from Jan. 14 through June 3 see this page.