El Niño is spreading killer BACTERIA

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El Niño could be transporting and spreading waterborne diseases like cholera thousands of miles, across oceans, with significant impacts for public health, researchers have warned. They say illnesses caused by waterborne bacteria reported in Latin America seem to be moving in tandem with when and where warm El Niño waters make contact with the land. Experts warned the finding could have 'huge significance for public health'.

The study, published in Nature Microbiology by a team of international researchers in the UK and US, analysed how the arrival of new and devastating Vibrio diseases in Latin America has concurred in both time and space with significant El Niño events. El Niño describes the unusual warming of surface waters along the tropical west coast of South America.

These events tend to occur every 3 - 7 years; something many suggest have become more regular and extreme in recent years, as a result of climate change. Through the new study, the result of a long-term collaboration with the National Institute of Health (INS) in Peru, the authors spotted illnesses caused by waterborne bacteria reported in Latin America seem to be moving in tandem with when and where warm El Niño waters make contact with the land.

Most significantly, drawing on new data derived from whole genome sequencing of bacterial strains, they suggest there are links between organisms that are causing illnesses in Asia with those that emerge in Latin America. Over the past 30 years, coinciding with the last three significant El Niño events in 1990/91, 1997/98 and 2010, new variants of waterborne pathogens emerged in Latin America.