Mosquito-vector infectious diseases and diabetes
By Jytte
Last week, our blog post was about the current most common infectious disease, covid-19, and its impact on diabetes patients. This week, we will discuss infectious diseases that come from mosquito bites. Firstly, we will briefly explain why mosquito-vector diseases are prevalent in our region. Then, we will quickly present a picture which explains the transmission of malaria parasites to humans. Furthermore, we discuss the vulnerability of diabetes patients to these mosquito-vector infectious diseases. Lastly, we will shortly explain the scale of this problem.
First of all, the tropical climate in the region of Central America provides ideal living conditions for some infectious diseases to survive and multiply. This climate offers high temperatures, optimal humidity and weather stability throughout the year. When asked about threatening health situations, one does not easily think of a mosquito bite. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. Mosquitoes can carry various infectious viruses or parasites, such as Chikungunya, Dengue and Malaria. The vectors of these microorganisms are the Aedes aegypti mosquito, the Aedes albopictus mosquito and the Anopheles mosquito. When one of these female mosquitoes bites you, then there is a significant chance that pathogens will be transmitted to you. Here it can develop disease and cause symptoms as fever, fatigue, headaches and pain in the muscles and joints. Since it is difficult to go into multiple infectious diseases in depth here, I limited further information of the pathogens, to the transmission of the malaria parasite. If you like to know more about this transmission, you can zoom in on the figure below.
The attractiveness of diabetes patients
The occurrence of infectious diseases in Diabetes Mellitus patients is much more prevalent. In addition, they also have a higher chance of developing severe outcomes of those infectious diseases. This is caused by the inadequate functioning of the immune system. In our first blog post, Joost explained the effects of Diabetes Mellitus on the immune system. This post gives you a compact overview of some processes of the immune system. If you haven’t read it already, I really recommend it. Besides, research has shown that the less glucose levels are controlled and stabilised, the less sufficient the immune system is. Therefore, the risk of developing illness increases. The reverse also applies, infectious diseases can reduce the stability of the glucose levels .
However, some state that pathogens can better survive in diabetes patients due to the hyperglycaemia environment. It is thought that the higher levels of glucose increases their chances of survival and ability of replication. On the other side, some state that these higher virulence outcomes are attributable to lack of optimal function of the immune system function. The conclusion about this hypothesis remains unclear, as the precise underlying mechanisms are not completely understood. Further research is needed to prove this exact linking in humans.
In addition, for Chikungunya and dengue fever, there is no curable treatment available. Fortunately, for malaria disease curable treatment does exist. Lastly, it is important to mention that research shows a higher concentration of antidiabetic medication when patients suffer from diabetes and infectious diseases, all at once. All these statements need to be considered when discussing the burden of diabetes disease.
A burden of increasing scale
To conclude, the scale of this double burden of disease becomes clear, when the rising prevalence of diabetes mellitus worldwide is taken into account. However, diabetes disease in tropical countries is often underdiagnosed, glycaemic control falls short and accurate surveillance data on infectious diseases is lacking. The expected rise of these diseases puts stress on the healthcare institutions and it can be stated that a focus on prevention is needed.
We hope you enjoyed reading our post. Next week, Magda will take a look on how the problems that came forward on our blog can be tackled. What kind of interventions are already existing and how can they be improved? In order to tackle the problems in this area, and receive better health outcomes.
Thank you for reading,
Jytte
