Deadly Tropical Disease Migrates-Is Climate Change to Blame?

The tropics have come to the Pacific Northwest. Cool, right? Who doesn’t fancy palm trees, piña coladas, or even Islands the restaurant?
Sadly, this new inhabitant is of the menacing variety. Health officials report that the killer disease cryptoccal has set up shop in Lewis and Clark territory.
The culprit?
Scientists aren’t 100 percent sure, but signs point to climate change.
Spread by the fungus Cryptococcus gattii, the disease causes pneumonia, meningitis and other lung, brain and muscle ailments, reports The Daily Climate.
Previously contained in tropical and sub-tropical regions, like Australia, cryptococcus gattii struck Oregon in 2004—and it’s been spreading ever since.
Of the 60 cases reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nine patients died because of the infection and another six died with it.


While the CDC tentatively blamed global warming, other scientists weren’t so sure.
According to the CDC:

Because C. gattii typically has been regarded as tropical or subtropical in geographic distribution, its emergence in a temperate climate suggests that the pathogen might have adapted to a new climatic niche, or that climatic warming might have created an environment in which minimum threshold conditions for C. gattii spore survival and propagation are attained consistently.

Not so fast, Oregon epidemiologist Emelio DeBess told The Daily Climate: "The answer is we really don't know. We need to step back a little bit and find out how diverse is this organism. That's going to tell us about the age—did it just show up or has it been here a long time."
Nevertheless, writes The Daily Climate, tropical diseases have been finding new homes of late:

Last week the CDC issued a bulletin on a dengue fever outbreak in Puerto Rico, noting that while the disease is common on the island, the most recent epidemic is large and started earlier than usual.

Last year health researchers concluded warmer temperatures, higher humidity and increased precipitation – the types of weather forecast as greenhouse gas concentrations increase – have triggered higher rates of West Nile Virus infection across the Western United States.