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How Are Researchers Preparing for the Next Pandemic?

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Lyme disease. Rabies. Zika virus. Mpox. Ebola virus. AIDS. COVID-19.

More than likely, you’ve probably heard of at least a few—if not all—of these illnesses. But what do they all have in common? Each are classified as zoonotic diseases.

The study and prevention of zoonotic disease—defined by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as disease caused by germs like viruses, bacterial, parasites, and fungi that can be transmitted between animals and people—have been an ongoing priority of global health organizations for several years. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) currently are funding numerous grants for researchers to investigate zoonotic disease spread.

SIS professor Lauren Carruth, chair of the SIS department of Environment, Development & Health, is a recipient of one of these grants. Carruth is an anthropologist who has studied zoonotic diseases in the Horn of Africa since 2017.

Carruth traveled to eastern Ethiopia this summer to investigate when and under what conditions the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) spreads between wildlife, livestock, and humans. We caught up with Carruth to learn more about her time in Ethiopia and what she learned from her research.

What did Your Research Entail?
Carruth was part of a multidisciplinary team of epidemiologists, wildlife biologists, physicians, and disease modelers who analyzed how MERS-CoV moved along the commodity chain of camels being raised, traded, and exported from Ethiopia to countries in the Middle East.
To see where transmission exists and how transmission rates change, Carruth and other researchers administered MERS-CoV testing to the camels—and the people and other animals with whom camels come into regular contact—along the commodity chain of camels moving from rural Ethiopia.
“We’re trying to predict when and under what conditions dangerous zoonotic pathogens—like different coronaviruses, like the MERS-CoV pathogen—are likely to spill over to humans,” Carruth said.
What did You Discover Through Research?
So far, Carruth said there is not any indication that the MERS-CoV disease pathogen is spilling over to humans in Ethiopia, but most camels in eastern Ethiopia do have antibodies from MERS-CoV, indicating they have been infected in the past. According to Carruth, MERS-CoV is significantly more deadly to humans than SARS-CoV2, the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic. 
During her summer research, Carruth also learned that Saudi Arabia is the number one consumer of Ethiopian and Somali camel products, as well as the number one importer of live camels. As a result, Saudi Arabia has an “enormous influence” on pastoralist economies in the Horn of Africa, Carruth explained.
“Saudi Arabia now owns all of the quarantine facilities that are required for export [out of the Horn of Africa], and it has raised the prices for livestock holders to receive certification for the export of their livestock,” she said. “This is going to have major consequences for the livestock economy in this part of the world.”

A milk seller in Ethiopia sits near a jug of milk

Carruth said, third, she learned “how incredibly intimate the relationship is between people and their camels.”
“Camels are a symbol of life and health,” Carruth said. “They’re the interface between humans and their environment. People take in their environment through the consumption of camel milk and other camel products, as camels consume the freshest vegetation—even therapeutic, medicinal plants—in the environment.”
This relationship between people and their camels is also one that can be affected by things like violence and displacement because these factors impact lands where camels can be grazed or transported, Carruth explained. Camel economies are also impacted by climate change, as this affects the vegetation available for grazing.
“Rains are less predictable and less frequent, and summers are hotter, so that affects the vegetation that the camels eat and the places that you have to go to graze your animals,” Carruth said. “Climate change is of utmost importance to the people living there because it has changed the animals’ diets and the animals’ lives on which they depend.”
What was the Goal of this Research?
The goal of the research backed by the NIH and NSF grant is twofold, according to Carruth. First, MERS-CoV is a pathogen of global health concern, and the NIH and NSF have an interest in understanding these pathogens as they emerge in places like the Horn of Africa.
“The United States government and citizens who pay taxes that fund the government agencies like the NIH and NSF have an interest in understanding these pathogens as they emerge and evolve and spillover in places like the Horn of Africa,” Carruth said.
Second, there is a growing interest among NIH and NSF researchers in improving laboratory facilities and increasing the capacity of Ethiopian investigators to do this kind of disease surveillance research on their own.
“I think a lot of this NIH and NSF work is not just to provide fundamental research findings, but to bring in Ethiopian and Somali investigators and increase their capacity to do this in the future,” Carruth said.
What is Next for this Research?
Following her summer research, Carruth said she is interested in investigating the implications of economic and policy changes in the Horn of Africa on camel economies.
“I think it’s threatening to a lot of Ethiopians and Somalis that they no longer have control over those [camel] economies—that they instead are being controlled largely by the country of Saudi Arabia,” Carruth said. “The trading practices, transit, certification, and even the provision of vaccines and health care for animals is being governed by another country and not their own.
She added: “They’re very concerned about the externalization of the livestock economy there, and I think that may be something that I am interested in investigating in the future.”
How has Research into Zoonotic Disease Changed in Recent Years?
One major change in zoonotic disease research came after the COVID-19 pandemic, Carruth said. The pandemic sparked by SARS-CoV-2 ultimately resulted in greater knowledge about coronaviruses among biologists and increased laboratory capacity to study these kinds of pathogens.
“When I first started writing the grants for this research, there were very, very few laboratories that could even test for MERS-coronavirus or could do the sort of analysis we wanted to do,” she said. “But now, just six years out from that original grant writing, there are so many times more laboratories that can do this research.”
Carruth said she is also noticing a positive trend of more zoonotic disease research being conducted by people in the communities most affected by these diseases: “It's great that the NSF and NIH want to invest in local and national researchers to be doing this work. I think more and more research like this will be done by Ethiopians and by Somalis, as it should be, rather than expat researchers sort of parachuting into remote locations and doing this research remotely, and then having those findings really meet the needs of American taxpayers.
“To have this [research] be done by and for Ethiopians and Somalis, I think will [produce] … better results.”