Vulnerability to climate-driven pathogen-specific diarrheal diseases: secondary analysis from the Global Enteric Multicenter Study and Vaccine Impact on Diarrhea in Africa follow-up.

Authors

Megan Kowalcyk, Kristopher B Karnauskas, Indira Bose, Elizabeth J Carlton, Samba Sow, M Jahangir Hossain, Richard Omore, Karen Kotloff, Andrea Buchwald

Published in

Nature communications. Volume 17. Issue 1. Aug 06, 2026. Epub Aug 06, 2026.

Abstract

The identification of climate-related risk factors for pathogen-specific diarrhea is critical for building resilience in high-risk and low-resource settings. Here we performed secondary analysis of published data from the Global Enteric Multicenter Study (GEMS) and Vaccine Impact on Diarrhea in Africa (VIDA) follow-up. We used daily counts of rotavirus, Shigella, Cryptosporidium, and enterotoxigenic E. coli producing heat stable toxin from two case-control studies of moderate-to-severe diarrhea (MSD) in The Gambia, Kenya and Mali (n = 9378). Using Random forests we identify influential climate and vulnerability factors for predicting pathogen presence. Accounting for time trends, our Zero-inflated Poisson models found that associations between weather and MSD were modified by socio-economic factors including transportation, television ownership, electricity access, and introduction of the rotavirus vaccine, but these were site- and pathogen-specific. Our study provides evidence that socio-demographic-associated vulnerability factors are correlated with variable pathogen-specific disease risks.

PMID:
42693103
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 04 Sep 2026.

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