Since the pandemic of Sars-Cov-2 many scientists have warned of the effects that the climate change is already having on ecosystems: the climatic belts are shifting and with them also animal species from which we should try to stay away. But there is another consequence of global warming to keep an eye on for the future spillover: lo melting iceof the poles as of the mountain ranges, it could release potentially pathogenic microorganisms remained trapped even for thousands of years. This is suggested by the results of a study by the University of Ottawa in Canada, published in the magazine Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The research team has indeed found viral genetic material near Lake Hazen, the largest freshwater lake in theArcticand calculated the chances of a “thawed” pathogen infecting organisms.

Thawed microorganisms

It was 2016 when a outbreak of anthrax: dozens of infected people, including a child, who later died. There have been no cases since 1941. According to the reconstruction aanomalous heat wave that year had caused him melting of the permafrost and unearthed one reindeer carcass infected, held responsible for contamination. And this is not the only evidence that potential threats to human health lurk in the ice. In 2014 some French scientists had awakened a giant virus from 30 thousand years ago found in Siberian permafrost, showing that it was still capable of infecting an organism. Most recently, in 2021, a team from Ohio State University has found genetic material of 33 viruses in samples of ice coming fromTibetan plateau: 28 viruses were unknown until then and researchers estimated they may have been trapped as well 15 thousand years ago.

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The risk of new pandemics

To understand how much the biological risk Since the melting of the ice is concrete, Stéphane Aris-Brosou and his colleagues collected soil and sediment samples from Lake Hazen, in the Arctic, and analyzed them by isolating molecules of dna And rna compatible with viral sequences already known. Thanks to an algorithm they evaluated the possibility that these viruses succeed in infect organisms, concluding that the greatest risk is precisely in the places where the thaw waters. Make predictions about possible spilloverhowever, it is not at all easy: for the contagion to occur it is necessary that i thawed virus and theirs animal vectors are found in the same environment. And given that climate change, in addition to determining the melting of the ice, is altering the habits of many species, the variables they are multiplying.

So will the next pandemic come from melting Arctic ice? “The only result that we can take home with confidence is that as temperatures rise the risk of spillover in this particular environment it is increasing “Aris-Brosou said.

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