Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and other institutions report that satellite imagery could be used to determine areas at high-risk for exposure to Sin Nombre virus (SNV), a rodent-born disease that causes the often fatal hantaviral pulmonary syndrome (HPS) in humans. According to the researchers, satellite imaging detects the distinct environmental conditions that may serve as a refuge for the disease-carrying deer mice. Higher populations of infected deer mice increase the risk of HPS to humans. Their findings are published in the study, Satellite Imagery Characterizes Local Animal Reservoir Populations of Sin Nombre Virus in Southwestern United States, which will appear in the December 2, 2002, issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Gregory E. Glass, PhD, professor of molecular microbiology and immunology in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said, This is an important finding because, at a practical level, it provides a way to monitor the environment for the risk of an infectious disease before an outbreak occurs. At a more basic level it gives us a way to better understand why outbreaks happen when and where they do.

Before satellite imaging was used to predict high-risk areas, the only SNV tracking method was through rodent sampling or follow-up to human cases of disease. Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health researchers used Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) satellite data from 1997 and 1998 to identify environments associated with human risk of HPS caused by rodent SNV. LANDSAT 5 TM imagery was obtained for a study area in the southwestern United States where HPS was initially recognized in 1993. The images were processed and HPS risk maps were generated. Logistic regression was used to estimate risk using the digital numbers in each of the three TM bands. The researchers teamed with workers from the University of New Mexico, the Centers for Disease Control
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Contact: Kenna L. Brigham
paffairs@jhsph.edu
410-955-6878
Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health
2-Dec-2002

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